Hoosier Banker 11 PHOTO CAPTION: Tom Fite speaks passionately about the mission of the Indiana Department of Financial Institutions. compliance aspect to consider. We’ll ask, ‘Have you thought about doing it some other way?’ It’s a strategic discussion. “It also helps us at DFI, because we learn a lot in these discussions. We’re generalists. We have a lot of knowledge covering a lot of different areas in banking. However, I would estimate that we would possess somewhere around 50 percent of all available knowledge in any particular banking category, while banks have experts who have the advantage of specializing more narrowly, and therefore can drill down deeper into certain topics. Therefore I have to be open-minded and recognize that I have an opportunity to learn during these discussions, and something I learn might impact my supervisory response.” What is something you would like Indiana bankers to know about the DFI that they may not already know? “First, I think it would be interesting if bankers understood the day in the life of an examiner. They see the examiner as somebody who comes in Monday morning, asks a thousand questions, asks for lots of documents, then leaves on Friday or the second Friday thereafter. A couple of weeks later, the examiner presents a report to the board, and that’s pretty much the end of it. “But it would be interesting for bankers to understand what the examiner lifestyle is really like. For example, at the end of each work day, when bankers go home to their families, examiners go back to the Holiday Inn Express. They don’t go home to their backyards and have cookouts with their kids. “An examiner’s life means missing out on Little League games, anniversaries, kids losing first teeth – any of those life events that
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