More About Alex Lamb

My introduction to member-owned banking occurred in this way. While I was in elementary school, I would walk home from school everyday, and my dad would be there. He worked from home. My sister and I were not encouraged to interrupt him, but he would look up and say “Ah, it must be 3:33 --- you are right on schedule”, then continue with his work. I never thought it was odd that, without trying, to I always took 18 minutes to walk home from school.

There weren’t very may things that could interrupt this routine. One of them was if I had received any money for work or in the mail from a relative. Then he would say, “Do you want to go to the bank?” Looking back to that time, and leaving out trips to the doctor’s office (at Division clinic), I don’t remember my dad offering to take me places in his car. But he would always offer to drive me to Oregon Mutual Savings Bank.

In those days, the bank was in the 700 NE Multnomah building, the twin to where KPB is now. He would explain that since it was a “mutual” bank, the earnings of the bank were paid back to members like me, in the form of interest. I had a passbook account, so every time I went into the bank I handed it over to the teller. The interest I was receiving as a part owner of the bank was printed in the passbook, and the teller handed it back to me.

That was long ago, and OMSB eventually moved downtown, then “de-mutualized”, so it could be merged with a stockholder owned bank. It was about that time that I started working on-call for Kaiser, so I joined another member-owned firm, Kaiperm Northwest Credit Union. Over the years, I began using my accounts for more than savings. I have always appreciated the service I received, and I have been glad that Kaiperm has been there for me, rather than selling out in a search for profit.

When I was elected to the Board of Directors of Kaiperm, it was with the idea that the credit union should always “be there” to take deposits and make loans to people who are part of the Kaiser Permanente “family”. I have been pleased that Kaiperm is able to keep up with the times, while remaining true to the ethics of the credit union movement: providing service to members, who are the owners of the credit union. We are all offered hundreds of different financial-service products, by dozens of different companies who exist to make a profit from us. There are few indeed that are there to help us “get ahead”. That is why Kaiperm is still the right choice for me.

Many things have changed, and I no longer get home at the same time each day. But I still live in Southeast Portland, and my parents still live close to my old elementary school.

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