Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56065
Banking by Sharon Shinn numerous ways to rephrase a simple philosophy of business: The customer comes first. Desoer, president of Bank of America Home Loans based in Calabasas, California, believes that banks and other institutions will only weather the economic storm by keeping the custom- er front and center. "During the downturn, we'velearned so much, and some of it seems pretty basic," she says. "Many people will say, 'We all know you should put the customer first,' but not everybody leads with that philosophy. It makes all the difference." She's in a position to know. Bank of America's Home Loans F or someone perched fairly high in the banking hier- archy, Barbara J. Desoer has never lost sight of the end users who borrow money, save money, and worry about money. Even in a short conversation, she finds on Customers Barbara Desoer has helped shepherd Bank of America's Home Loans division through the collapse of the housing market. She knows that giving customers what they want is the only sure road to economic recovery. division serves almost 14 million customers, or nearly 20 percent of those who have home loans in the U.S. That's a division she has led since 2008—which means she's had a firsthand close-up look at how American consumers have dealt with the turmoil in the housing market for the past two years. 16 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2010