Kevin Barrie has been a banker for 25 years. You might say he got in on the ground floor and stayed there. As a senior v.p. and region manager for Union Bank, Barrie manages about two dozen Union branches south of Interstate 8 and east out to Santee. Before coming to Union seven years ago, he spent 18 years at BofA.

Barrie’s position involves training, teaching and motivating the branch personnel in his region. It’s a trickier proposition than at most community banks, since Union has both a consumer and a commercial clientele.

“Training is a problem because we deal with credit lines and more sophisticated bank products,” Barrie says. “Typically, employees we hire don’t have the training we need, so we have to bring it to them through training courses, and sales training to try and bring our younger bankers up to speed.”

Community bank presidents typically reflect on a time when big banks would provide the training to younger hires; they would then go to the community banks with a sufficient fund of knowledge to transact business. “That’s still happening,” Barrie says, but Union supplements whatever education a novice would receive with a retail and small business lending training program. “We’ve added a commercial credit training class, and one on cash flow analysis,” Barrie explains. “We want our lenders to have a broad understanding of how decisions are made, and to ask the right questions of prospective borrowers.”

One ongoing Union Bank initiative is focusing on its existing clientele as a source of new business. “We want to deepen our relationships with existing clients, and get our arms around our clients,” Barrie says.

“Transactions are dropping at branches because fewer clients come into a traditional branch to do their banking, so we have to find new ways to reach out to them. That means finding the right people to connect with clients over the phone, to identify and fulfill their needs.”

It is becoming more difficult for banks to connect with clients who are constantly on the go. “Bankers have migrated clients to the ATM and online banking, and convenience is a big deal, because people are trying to do more in their day,” Barrie says.

Union Bank sees strong demand for loans, but like most banks, faces a challenge corralling deposits, especially as Americans’ savings rate approaches zero. “You have to target your audience,” Barrie says. “Find them in the period of life when they are saving, or be there for them when they come into family wealth.”

Barrie says Union Bank is not overly concerned about what the UCLA Anderson forecast is calling a near recessionary environment for 2008. “It’s about finding the deals that can be done,” Barrie says, “and having clients who are not credit damaged.”

Barrie says Union Bank is trying to keep one old school aspect of branch banking alive. “We still have a drive-up teller in most of our offices.”