Death
Industry Takeover by Community
Financial System Caps Years of
Contempt for Community
By Matthew R. Lee
NEW YORK, Jan 15
– At what point does bank
executives' spin to investors
and the media become more than
misleading? And now, what does
it mean when a bank belatedly
confirms it stands with and
for death?
Take Community
Bank System (NYSE: CBU), which
when Fair Finance Watch
previously challenged it
received nine additional
questions from the Federal
Reserve on its proposal to
acquire Merchants, after its CEO
derided issues Fair
Finance Watch raised about the
proposal.
CBU made a
point of saying that New York
City-based Fair Finance Watch
was not local enough to them
to raise issues.
But now in 2026
CBU is going national, perhaps
international, in the death
industry. CBU announced
without irony: "Community
Financial System (NYSE: CBU)
announced that its wholly
owned banking subsidiary,
Community Bank, has agreed to
acquire ClearPoint Federal
Bank & Trust... a key
player in trust administration
for the $20 billion U.S. death
care industry."
Ah, death
care. They'll be hearing more
from non-local FFW about this
one. Watch this space - while
you can.
On a past
proposal, CBSI bad-mouthed a
Community Reinvestment Act
protest even as it had to
delay its Oneida deal. First,
CBSI's "Hal Wentworth said
that Inner City Press is not a
local group and pointed out
that letter was the only one
filed on the Oneida deal.
'This activist does not do
business with either Oneida or
Community Bank, but
nonetheless made vague
allegations regarding
Community,' Wentworth said.
'These allegations were
entirely without merit and
will be fully addressed by
Community Bank and Oneida
Savings in the application
process.'" Then the deal was
significantly delayed, with
CBSI pushing the date back.
More
spin: CFO Scott Kingsley
told
the media that FFW's protest
"is not the sole reason. We
have other things that have to
sequentially happen to get to
the technological conversion
in July. When we did not have
a definitive answer from the
Fed or other parties last
week, that put the
technological conversion at
risk, so we opted not to go
ahead.”
This time,
it went to the CEO Mark
Tryniski, who in January 2017
told
stock analysts that
"despite the baseless protest
filed with the Fed Reserve by
a serial activist, we expect
to close in the second"
question. We'll see. Among the
nine questions: "Community
Bank states that, to the
extent it does not intend to
continue to offer certain loan
products and services offered
by Merchants Bank post-merger,
it does not believe that not
offering such products and
services would have a
significant impact on the
target bank's communities. As
an example, Community Bank
cites the fact that Merchants
Bank would no longer accept
applications for FHA/VA loans
(on behalf of a mortgage
company), but that Community
Bank would offer loan products
and programs which are not
currently offered by Merchants
Bank that Community Bank
believes are comparable and
'equally valuable' to its
communities, such as FNMA's
Home Ready Program, Community
Bank's Affordable Housing
Program, and the USDA loan
program. Compare the features
of FHA and VA loans for which
applications are presently
taken by Merchants Bank with
the features of the products
and programs that Community
Bank asserts are comparable,
including any features of FHA
and VA loans that are not
covered by Community Bank's
offerings." Watch this
site.
***
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