Comment Detail

Comment

I am writing in support of the FHLB Des Moines and the other 10 FHLBanks.

My name is Alexis Henderson and I am the Chief Retail Officer of Success Bank located in Bloomfield, Iowa. Our institution provides lending across all of our community
including surrounding communities with a focus on agriculture. Success Bank currently has an asset
size of $250 million. We have 3 offices and 32 total employees, and we have been a FHLB Des Moines
member since 2005. We currently have a loan-to-deposit ratio of 95% which means we rely
completely on our membership access to the FHLB Des Moines for wholesale funding as our liquidity
source for primary and contingent liquidity when our rural local market communities cannot provide
the deposit levels required to fund needed lending. Without our membership access to the FHLBank
System, we have no other option but to reduce our loan-to-deposit ratio significantly to create
liquidity for our balance sheet which would lead directly to a significant reduction in our bank’s
earnings. Even worse, our bank would be severely limited in the amount of capital we inject into the
rural communities we currently serve through lending which hurts the economic vitality of those
communities.

The FHLB’s Mortgage Partnership Finance Program has allowed our bank to provide secondary market
opportunities to consumers that demand long-term fixed rate mortgage loans which due to our bank’s
size and risk profile, we cannot offer. The MPF Program has brought consumers into our bank that we
would have never had the opportunity to serve and allowed us to build banking relationships with
these consumers through other deposit and loan products that we are able to offer.

Our bank has also relied frequently on the FHLB’s Standby Letter of Credit. Success Bank IS the
community bank of Davis County, Iowa, and as a result, we are trusted with the vast majority of the
public funds deposits of our local municipalities. In addition to pledging bank assets to the Treasurer-
State of Iowa, the FHLB’s Standby Letter of Credit allows us to collateralize all public funds as required
by the State of Iowa while paying “Best of Market” interest rates on those deposits which directly
benefits the municipal organizations.

I hope my letter of support is helpful to the FHFA as you conduct your comprehensive review of the
FHLBank System. Success Bank values the FHLB Des Moines as a critical partner, and we believe that
making significant changes to the FHLBank System would place community banks at elevated levels of
risk to the national banking system. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Alexis Henderson
Chief Retail Officer
Success Bank