[3] The group offers training, certification, news, research, advocacy, and community for bankers and members of the financial services in America.

[5] Howenstein later recalled: The 1873 panic was a well spring of subject matter for correspondence and we cashiers availed of it for the general information.

With our pens we had wished each other the good cheer of a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and that scarcely discharged the pensiveness of our unrelief of bank work.

The desire possessed us to engage the mind for a season in new and restful and indeed educational objects to mitigate and counteract the despotism of money; to make some dividends out of our lifetime and set apart some days in the year to the extinguishment of bad debts which the eager pursuit of business had imposed on nature, to pause at regular intervals to put aside something to rest-fund.

[6] The ABA, first headquartered in New York City, organized its activities through sections focused on particular bank types.

The trust company section was organized in 1896, followed by one for clearing houses in 1899, savings banks in 1902, and state bankers associations in 1908.

[10] To facilitate advocacy before the Comptroller of the Currency, the national bank section opened the ABA's first office in Washington, D.C., in 1919.

[15] ABA launched other professional development programs in the years that followed, including for bank marketers, regulatory compliance officers, trust bankers, and commercial lenders.

"[27] ABA members include banks of all sizes and charters, and between them they represent over 95 percent of the industry's $13.5 trillion in assets, and employ over two million.

[28] After the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2011, the American Bankers Association announced that it would advocate for revisions.