And I want to emphasize that, if community bankers believe that significant variation in certain practices or policies is having an unfair or deleterious effect on one or more of their banks, they should feel more than comfortable raising these concerns with Board staff.
We do not regard such observations as criticism of our examiners, but instead as opportunities to test, and possibly adjust, our policies to promote overall consistency. A third way in which our community bank supervision differs from that of other banks is the particular effort made to limit the length of examinations and the amount of time bank personnel must spend on them.