The Tennessean

Later, he is teaching the group of tellers, branch managers and financial sales consultants how to pronounce certain names of Hispanic origin.

"If you call a customer’s name right, you’ll make his day,’’ Gumucio said, adding that "the ‘H’ in Hernandez is silent, while the ‘Z’ is pronounced like an ‘S’.’’ "To so many people new here, their name is their sense of identity.’’

This scene from a classroom at SunTrust’s service center off Donelson Pike and Interstate 40 is becoming more common across the Midstate. With the growth of the non-English-speaking segment of Nashville’s Hispanic community, several area banks and other employers are offering workers basic Spanish classes to be more accommodating to customers and attract new business.

In banking, the effort also has taken other forms. Nationwide and locally, banks are offering Spanish-language marketing materials and bilingual ATM instructions, as well as call centers and Internet sites to service a growing Hispanic market.

Community activists, however, see much room for improvement generally in the relationship between banks and Hispanics. Some bankers, meanwhile, cite a lack of understanding of Hispanic culture and needs as stalling a full-scale outreach in that community.

"It’s just starting to take off,’’ said Garrett Harper, research director with the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce of the efforts by area businesses. "The population isn’t new here, I think the awareness is new by the mainstream.’’

The best estimates indicate that more than 45,000 Hispanics — people from an area stretching from Mexico to Central America to South America and including Spain — now reside in Davidson County. That’s an increase in the area’s 1990 estimated Hispanic population of about 8,000.

Nationwide, Hispanics now make up 12% of the population, with a significant number being foreign–born. The growth in the community, driven partly by immigration, has made it an attractive target market for many U.S. businesses.

"Typically, immigrants on average have lower income and rate of home ownership,’’ said the chamber’s Harper. "Over a period of 10 to 20 years, they exceed those rates more than the native population.’’

Harper cautions businesses targeting the Hispanic market against viewing the community as one ethnic group.

"Many of them have more national loyalties than a pan-Hispanic or Latino way of viewing banking practices,’’ he said, adding Hispanics come from a cross-section of countries and socio-economic groups.

"There is still a professional, managerial group, as well as people who might not have had historically dealt with banking or lending institutions because of the volatility of those (banks) in their countries.’’

Serving the Hispanic market requires more flexibility from banks and much work needs to be done in areas such as making loans, observed Greg Rodriguez, president of the Nashville-based Tennessee Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He cited banks requiring Social Security numbers to open accounts as an example of a deterrent for some undocumented immigrants.

Bank of America, for instance, requires two valid forms of identification to open an account. A resident alien card, passport, state ID card or driver license can be used as primary identification, even if someone doesn’t have a Social Security card or number, a bank spokeswoman said.

Many undocumented immigrants often don’t have driver licenses or resident alien cards, community observers said.

Businessman Salvador Tobaldo, owner of Monsal Bakery on Nolensville Road, also cited a language barrier as an even stronger reason why many recent Hispanic immigrants don’t deal with banks.

Tobaldo remembers spending the first four of his six years in the United States without any account.

"Like many people I said: ‘I can’t go to bank, I can’t speak English and won’t find somebody there speaking Spanish,’ ’’ he recalled.

Now Tobaldo has personal and business accounts with a Bank of America branch on Nolensville Road.

Deborah Hotchkiss, who often handles Tobaldo’s transactions, was among about a dozen bank employees recently completing a Spanish course similar to the one under way at SunTrust. She said brushing up on lessons she learned in high school 18 years ago has come in handy as the Hispanic population grows in the area around her branch.

On a recent day, for instance, she was able to help answer questions from Mexico native Antonio Casas who had come to cash a check.

Casas, with Hotchkiss as a translator, said he has not had a bank account during his four years in Nashville, in part, because he assumed people in the branches didn’t speak Spanish.

Having completed financial transactions primarily using cash, money orders and a credit card, Casas said he now was considering opening an account to gain the ability to write checks.

The classes at Bank of America and SunTrust, plus those that recently occurred at Franklin National Bank, are offered by Hablemos, a Smryna-based company started in April by Gumucio. Other banks such as Union Planters also have offered courses.

Hablemos’ basic or introductory program consists of a 24-hour course spread over six weeks with two sessions a week lasting two hours each.

In addition to teaching key Spanish phrases with an emphasis on terms used in banking, the classes also offer lessons on culture. For instance, Gumucio said Hispanics generally have strong loyalty once someone earns their trust.

"We teach them how to better understand the Hispanic community and reach out to them,’’ he said of Hablemos’ work with businesses, also including construction companies.

But even with the recent outreach, leaders of some area banks concede they still have a way to go before launching any comprehensive effort targeting the Midstate’s Hispanic market.

"We don’t understand the way this community perceives banks and their needs,’’ observed Richard Herrington, president of Franklin Financial Corp., the parent company of Franklin National Bank. "Until we understand that, we don’t want to go out there and say ‘We want to be your bank.’"

However, the bank recognizes the community’s growth and wants to be accommodating, Herrington said. After several cases where branch employees were unable to communicate with Hispanic customers and prospective clients, Franklin National had 11 employees take classes with Hablemos.

"Right now, we’re just trying to accommodate those who come in the door,’’ Herrington said. "It’s more than being able to understand Spanish, you have to understand the culture and we’re trying to understand it.’’

Getahn Ward covers public companies, banking, insurance and finance for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 726-5968 or at gward@tennessean.com.

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