Banking’s first lady
Betsy Duke ends a groundbreaking year as the first chairwoman of industry’s top association

by Bob Antrobus
Virginia Business
September 2005

When it comes to fiscal policy, Virginia banker Betsy Duke has chatted up everyone from President Bush to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and even Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Access to powerful world leaders is one of the perks of representing the largest bank trade association in the country. For the past year, Duke — an executive vice president at Wachovia Bank in Virginia Beach — has served as chairwoman of the American Bankers Association. She is the first woman to do so.

With her one-year term ending this month, she describes her time as the voice for banking’s top lobbying group as “the experience of a lifetime.” Duke traveled the globe attending international monetary forums, boosting the visibility of female banking executives who represent only about 5 percent of bank CEOs in an industry where women occupy 65 percent of the work force.

Like many women in banking, Duke got her start at a small bank in Virginia, working as a part-time drive-through teller. By the time she was tapped for the ABA role in 2004, she had already accomplished several noteworthy firsts, though not in the direction her father intended. Lee Duke, a commercial general contractor in Hampton Roads and local bank director, intended for Betsy — his firstborn of three daughters — to become the state’s first female contractor. Instead, she was the first woman to lead the Virginia Bankers Association; the first female senior vice president at SouthTrust Bank (her employer before its acquisition by Wachovia); and the first female president and CEO of the Bank of Tidewater, which was acquired by SouthTrust.

Banking, she says, is a good career area for women. “The banking field is wide open now to women, and I expect to see more women move into CEO positions.” She counsels women “to take every opportunity that comes along and work in a variety of positions to learn as many different skills as possible.” Professional training is important, she adds, and banking offers many opportunities for continuing education. In fact, Duke began her involvement with the ABA as an instructor for the group’s National School of Bank Investments.

As chairwoman of the ABA, ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the country’s top 25 lobbying groups, Duke directs the association’s affairs and represents the banking industry in public forums, such as testifying before Congress. She logged about 800,000 miles during the last three years attending ABA board and council meetings and working as a liaison with 50 state banking associations. Addition-ally, she represented the trade group at international events where Alan Greenspan’s counterparts in the European Union, Japan and China discussed topics ranging from current yield curves to valuation of the yuan (the Chinese currency).

During Duke’s tenure, banks have faced the burden of regulatory compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to monitor and report suspicious activity. She says banks go the extra mile because none want terrorist transactions to slip through. Ongoing regulatory compliance will continue to be a major strategic challenge for banking, says Duke, as well as legislative efforts to level the competitive playing field with nontraditional credit unions.

As for Duke’s rise from teller to banking executive, she modestly chalks it up to involvement. “You get involved at one level, and it leads to something else at a higher level.” Before assuming the ABA’s top post, she served on most of its major councils, chairing the Government Relations Council for a year. In addition, she is a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond and has served on many community boards.

So what’s next when she turns over the ABA reins at the end of the month? Besides having more time for her job as an executive vice president with Wachovia’s Merger Project Team back in Virginia Beach, Duke plans to pursue another passion: educational programs that teach financial concepts to the young. Who better than a banker to encourage people to save?