Community bankers are spending more on employee training.

Community bankers are investing more dollars in employee training, according to an ABA Banking Journal survey of 504 community banker CEOs.

Seventy percent report their training and education budgets were higher in 2004 than 2003, and 75 percent project 2005's spending will be higher still. The chief causes for this rise are: pursuing a sales culture (26 percent); handling the bank's expansion (24 percent) and coping with regulation (25 percent).

Also, 69 percent of the bankers say it's harder to hold onto key customers today than it was five years ago. (For most, "key customers" means customers who are 30-55 years old.) Despite this difficulty, 41 percent of the bankers say they have a larger portion of their key customers' financial relationships than five years ago.