Abacus Federal Savings Bank in New York's Chinatown still issues customers small notebooks, called "passbooks." These jewel-toned passportlike books contain a list of transactions that provide customers with their complete banking history. Each transaction is verified by a bank issued stamp.
Jill Sung, CEO of the $310 million-asset Abacus, said that passbooks are costly to produce but are important to their customers, especially older ones.
"They open up the book and they can see all the transactions they've done versus a statement you only see that month. There's historical significance," said Sung. "It makes them feel good because they can see all the deposits that came in."
Offering culturally relevant products like these, despite their costs, is just one of the ways that Asian-owned banks adapt to their customers. They also hire native Chinese-speaking employees to help their customers, and they translate terminology to reflect financial nuances specific to Asia.
Customers reward the banks with loyalty, sticking with them rather than turning to the country's biggest banks.
"We have to give a lot of service to customers," said Sung. "We know larger banks are not investing in that anymore, because it's not necessarily cost effective. And they're not large customers."
Communicating with those customers in their native language is no easy feat. Banks with Chinese-speaking customers have to rely on their staff and cultural knowledge to meet their clients' full needs — rather than rely on extensive government translations and resources available in other non-English languages, like Spanish for example.
Talking through financial jargon
Since written disclosures in Mandarin are unavailable, Abacus, in addition to East West Bank in Pasadena, California, uses a customer's native language to verbally walk them through documents written in English that are necessary for transactions, such as those needed to close a mortgage.
East West carries out one-on-one mentoring and tutoring for new hires, to show them the "tips and tricks of the trade," according to Parker Shi, chief operating officer of the regional institution. The $68.5 billion-asset bank is the largest Asian-owned bank in the country, with branches in both the U.S. and China.
In addition to the verbal aids from bankers, customers will often ask relatives, mortgage brokers or third-party translators key questions.
There is enormous "complexity" in the translation process, Shi said, since communications to consumers need to be "100% conforming to the real regulation." To ensure accuracy, East West will even sometimes send English terms to mainland China to get a Chinese perspective. That team then sends their proposed translation back to be checked for legal compliance.
Translating financial concepts can prove tricky when considering the cultural differences between key financial terms, and takes an immense amount of resources to translate effectively, according to Sung.
For example, the concept of "retail banking" is more accurately encompassed by the Chinese translation of "personal banking," according to Shi.
Shi added that the nuances of financial terminology become even more tricky as terms have different connotations depending on the specific context.
Overall, there are "three major categories of differences" when translating a financial term into Chinese, according to Shi. First, characters are written differently in simplified and traditional Chinese, and different groups are usually comfortable with one of the two written forms. Secondly, different Chinese dialects, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, have their own takes on certain concepts. Finally, the dialects split off into further strains depending on where they are spoken, such as Hong Kong, Singapore or China.
Written in stone
But having documents written in Mandarin, even if the consumer can use a translator to help them verbally understand the content, is essential, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This is because signing off on English documents can expose non-English speakers to deceptive practices. For instance, a lender may present limited English proficient customers with only the signature page, and not the full document, if they are looking to take advantage of the borrower.
Despite this being a best practice, banks have been only verbally translating documents into Chinese for their customers who have limited English proficiency. "[W]hen it comes to terms and conditions and a disclosure, most of the documents are actually in English," Shi said.
But federal regulators are trying to make the process easier for banks that work with customers with limited English abilities, in hopes that banks will more fully serve this population. So far, much of that work has been in Spanish.
The CFPB has published several Spanish-language model disclosures such as model forms for prepaid cards and home mortgage origination documents. Banks can use those when communicating with Spanish-speaking customers, drastically reducing the risk that they'll get in trouble for miscommunicating.
But none of these model forms exist in Mandarin.
The CFPB does have financial terminology glossaries available in a few major non-English languages spoken in the U.S., like Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic. But their primary purpose is to help consumers understand the complex U.S. financial system, rather than a tool for bankers to use in official transactions.
"The model that prevails right now is that the English version of the contract is the official one. The legally binding one. And any translation is given as a courtesy," said Chris Willis, a partner at Troutman Pepper, who specializes in consumer financial services law.
He said that it's hard because written financial language is a concept unique to American financial law, like penalty fees or APR, that may not exist in other jurisdictions.
"So the question is, is there a way of saying that in another language that doesn't have those laws in that country and doesn't have the regulatory scheme that we have, that can still convey the same meaning?" he posed.
Drafting any type of legal document, even in English, is an incredibly tedious process complicated by reviews and checks, he said. "You've got to have somebody in each of those areas in the bank that's fluent enough in, let's say, Mandarin, to be able to read it intelligently and really understand it like a native speaker would."
He added that in his city, Atlanta, as far as he knows, there are only three transactional lawyers who speak fluent Mandarin. "It's that talent gap that prevents it from happening too," he said.
Recent efforts to pen translations
The CFPB is currently working on Mandarin model forms that comply with English-based regulation, but the process is slow.
"Disclosures are more geared towards explaining and helping people understand our rights," a spokesperson from the Office of Financial Education at the CFPB said. "We really want to make sure that we're doing a very rigorous process on that."
After the Office of Regulations translates the document, they are passed to auditors to look for areas that might trigger regulatory concerns. The team also checks for plain language and cultural competency.
The next phase is user testing, where they present the drafts to a consumer. Key questions need to be answered including: Can the consumer understand what it says? Do they agree with the terms that are being used? Are they able to take action if necessary?
"We want to make sure the translations they use are accurate, that they're prioritizing communications based on what's most important for consumers," said the CFPB spokesperson.
Even in Spanish, the agency does not have a full suite of disclosures. At Banco Si, Signature Bank of Arkansas' Spanish-service branch, bankers often have to have a "translation conversation" to walk them through documentation on products, said Tori Bogner, a spokesperson for Bank of Arkansas.
"Our hands are kind of tied," said Bogner. "Regulators need to be able to read the document and if the regulators aren't bilingual then the document can't be bilingual."
Willis added that even if the CFPB successfully releases a translated model document, there's no guarantee that institutions will add them to their arsenal, as the CFPB only releases original disclosures, but doesn't actually put out any contracts of its own. He compares this to Fannie Mae's Spanish mortgage agreements, where Spanish speakers have to adopt them in order to sell to the agency.
Reaching cultural competency
Still, banks view the effort of banking in their customers' native language as worth it. This step allows these institutions to help clients complete more seamless transactions and to better understand their customers' needs.
Many Chinese immigrants view owning a home as the first step of reaching the "American dream," Sung said.
"You start saving and the first purchase you will make is a house because that's concrete," she added. "You want to invest in a piece of property that your family can live in, where you don't feel like you're gonna be kicked out of tomorrow."
Sung noted that many of the bank's customers are great at saving a significant portion of their income. They tend to see this as their sacrifice for coming generations, she added. And this is another reason why Abacus retains their passbook savings account. Customers find comfort in owning a financial document that endures.
Having a level of connection to customers' basic financial needs is also important for younger generations of immigrants, like international college students hailing from China or other parts of Asia. East West's global student account includes a fee waiver on one international transfer per month for families to send their children allowance.
Shi said that East West's international reach enables them to tap into the needs of Chinese consumers through their network.
The spokesperson at the CFPB said that the bureau is looking to publish Chinese written documents in the near future, ensuring the translations are airtight by completing the relevant user testing.
Until then, banks like Abacus and East West are tinkering away on their own. "It's a very costly and time consuming process, but worth it for us," Shi said.
