Pub. 2 2013 Issue 4

l e a d i n g a d v o c a t e f o r t h e b a n k i n g i n d u s t r y i n k a n s a s 20 How to learn more about your FCS competitor Bankers know when they are competing against the FCS, but quite often they do not know which FCS association they are up against. It is important, though, for bankers to know which of the 82 FCS associations they are competing against because these associations differ dramatically in size, aggressiveness, geographical reach, territorial overlap, and willingness to bend the rules of the Farm Credit Administration (FCA) in competing against banks and other tax-paying lenders. For example, the two largest associations, FCS of America, with $19.61 billion of assets at the end of 2012, and Farm Credit Mid-America, with $19.06 billion of assets at the end of 2012, each serve all or most of four states. At the other end of the size spectrum, Delta ACA, with $32.46 million of assets at the end of 2012, serves all or part of only five counties in southeastern Arkansas while FCS of Hawaii, with $81.73 million of assets at the end of 2012, serves just the state of Hawaii. The easiest way to find out which FCS association or associations you are competing against is to review this map of FCS association territories. When you zoom in to your market area, you may notice some color-coded cross-hatching and dots – that indicates two associations serve the same area and therefore are competing against each other in that territory. The name of the association serving a particular area is shown next to a star, which indicates the location of the city where the association is headquartered. Detailed information about each association can be obtained through links on an alphabetical listing of every FCS institution on this FCA webpage:  http://www.fca.gov/apps/instit.nsf/Active%20Institutions%20 Page?OpenPage.  Clicking on a link on that webpage will bring up a page of information about the association, including a listing of the counties it serves, contact information, and the association’s organizational history. In the upper right-hand corner of this webpage is a link to the association’s quarterly call reports, which are quite similar to bank call reports in structure and content. In the lower left-hand corner is a link to a detailed color map of the association’s territory. If the association has a website, and all but the smallest do, a link to it will be shown. Association websites generally provide a wealth of information, including links to quarterly and annual reports to borrower/shareholders and information about the association’s lending and financial services activities as well as office locations. Because websites have become an important marketing tool for FCS associations, periodically visiting the websites of the relevant associations will keep a banker up-to- date on what its FCS competition is up to. AgDirect continues to grow in the shadows of the FCS As prior issues of FCW have reported, AgDirect (www.agdirect.com ), which is managed by FCS of America (FCSA), extends credit, through farm equipment dealers, to Bert Ely’s farm credit watch ® Shedding Light on the Farm Credit System, America’s Least Known GSE ©2013 Bert Ely