Banking on the future: UMB's Kemper advocates more counseling on saving, less selling of debt.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Attitude at Altitude

Mariner Kemper is the 33-year-old chairman and CEO of UMB Financial Corp., a $7.5 billion, multi-state banking company that posted a pretty good growth year in 2005. On June 1, Kemper announced that UMB had purchased Mountain States Bancorporation, a nearly 60-year-old Denver institution that boosts UMB Bank's Colorado asset base to $658 million. Colorado is where Kemper wants Kansas City, Mo.-based UMB Financial to grow. It's his home, and it's the West, where state economies are growing most rapidly, and it's where Kemper gained his reputation for building UMB assets despite Colorado's arduous recovery from the recession.

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And yet Mariner Kemper isn't quite satisfied.

And he's seriously concerned about the economic outlook facing his customers.

Kemper says bankers and other corporate leaders have failed American consumers by not "coaching savings," and he thinks it's the responsibility of American business to take the lead in making things right.

"Those who haven't saved are coming to banks for advice and counsel," Kemper said during an interview following the Mountain States purchase. But instead of offering good advice, he said, many banks are selling their customers more debt.

"They're getting debt. They're getting credit," he said. "There's so much pressure on the top line to build our businesses, we may be doing a disservice as an industry to the customer we're supposed to be supporting."

He calls on fellow senior executives across the country to take a breather, and look to future growth, giving up a little short-term gain for more long-term value in their companies. "I'm in the business of making loans," said Kemper, "so I'm not advocating we all stop making loans. But I'm saying maybe we ought to be advocating a little stronger on the consumer's behalf than we are on our own."

News of UMB Financial's purchase of Mountain States was swamped by the announcement on the same day that Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp had bought Vail Banks Inc. for nearly $100 million, including 24 WestStar Bank locations, mostly on the Western Slope. Kemper dismissed that larger purchase as symptomatic of analysts' and Wall Street's concern for "earnings at all costs, rather than having enterprise value and franchise value for the future built into the analysis."

"That's where my 'built to last vs. built for sale' thing comes in," Kemper said, referring to an analogy he likes to use. Companies that are "built to last," he said...