THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702220557
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM SHEAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 38 lines
After suffering the loss of banking jobs from a giant merger five years ago, downtown Norfolk stands to gain from another bank consolidation.
NationsBank Corp., which merged with St. Louis-based Boatmen's Bankshares Inc. in January, said it will fold Boatmen's credit-card operations into NationsBank facilities in Norfolk, Charlotte and Dover, Del.
The NationsBank Card Services center in downtown Norfolk will add about 170 positions in March and April because of the Boatmen's consolidation, a spokeswoman at Charlotte-based NationsBank said Friday.
The Norfolk card center also will add 170 positions this year to handle routine growth in the company's card portfolio, said Jamie Pickrell, the NationsBank spokeswoman.
During the past year, the amount of debt carried on NationsBank's cards has increased 27 percent to $9.5 billion, she said. That came on top of a 29 percent increase in 1995.
The company's Norfolk facility currently employs more than 1,850 people who handle customer inquiries about lost cards, billing disputes with merchants, and collections of overdue bills. Part of the work force also seeks to curb losses from fraud, theft, and personal bankruptcy.
The marketing of NationsBank's cards is handled in Charlotte, and card applications are processed in Delaware. Monthly billing and a handful of other tasks are performed by outside companies.
The Boatmen's card portfolio, which has $640 million of card debt, had been processed at facilities in St. Louis, Wichita, and Albuquerque, N.M.
NationsBank was formed in late 1991 from the merger of NCNB Corp. of Charlotte with C&S/Sovran Corp., which had dual headquarters in Atlanta and Norfolk. With the consolidation, hundreds of banking jobs in Norfolk were eliminated. Hundreds of others were shifted to Atlanta, Charlotte and Dallas.
What softened the blow was the transfer of NCNB's card operations and jobs from Greensboro, N.C., to the C&S/Sovran card facilities in downtown Norfolk.