WICHITA, Kan. — Banks and credit union executives will be waiting for the next several months, even years, for theirbusiness to change, perhaps dramatically, as federal regulators implement the most significant piece of banking legislation in nearly two decades.

While the genesis of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was the subprime crisis and the failure of large investment and traditional banks such as Lehman Bros. and Washington Mutual, the 848-page document has myriad new rules for all banks, thrifts and credit unions.

Not all of the new law’s effects on financial services are clear, bankers and credit union executives said.

But a combination of the changes brought about by the rules, as well as the rules themselves, could drive some smaller bankers to leave the business altogether and alter the way banks deal with retail customers, they said.

Moreover, the new regulations will put additional pressure on bank profits.

“It’s going to make it harder to make money, and, with an adjunct to that, it’s going to make it harder to serve our customers,” said Charlie Chandler, chairman, president and CEO of Intrust Bank, which has $3.7 billion in assets.

And not all the effects of the new law have yet to be realized.

“Frankly, it’s hard to get our arms around it because there are so many tentacles,” Chandler said.

One of Dodd-Frank’s effects is crystal-clear for John Clevenger, the Wichita-area head of $17.8 billion Commerce Bank.

“The economics of retail banking are going to change,” Clevenger said. “That’s the one thing that’s certain.”

It’s not that retail banking will become “uneconomical,” Clevenger said. But measures within the new law, such as changes to how much banks can charge retailers to process customers’ debit and credit card transactions, probably will mean less income for banks. The new law provides for the Federal Reserve, not banks, to set rates on such interchange fees.

“When the market’s been setting a price and then the government sets the price, there’s a potential danger there,” Clevenger said.

Though those interchange fees have yet to be set by the Fed, “we don’t think it’s going to be better for banks; we think it’s going to be worse,” Clevenger said.

The anticipated cut to the interchange fee comes on top of a decrease in fee income from ATM and debit card overdrafts implemented by a separate rule change by the Fed earlier this year.

“(Those fees) did cover quite a bit of the overhead of providing branch-based services, so we are going to have to be more thoughtful about how we provide branch-based services,” Clevenger said.

As fees that support retail banking services such as branches and free checking decline, banks will have to look harder at offering so many “free” services, said Tom Page, president of $1.4 billion Emprise Bank.

“My sense is community banks will find out they can no longer do these things for nothing,” Page said.

Free checking today may mean in the future that there will still be no fees as long as a customer maintains a specific balance in their checking account, Clevenger said.

Banks also will put a lot more scrutiny in deciding to invest in capital-intensive retail banking services, such as building new branches.

“I do think this will slow, if not stop, that branch-building binge that, as an industry, we have been on,” Clevenger said.

But the new law’s effect probably won’t stop at changing retail banking services.

Intrust’s Chandler and Emprise’s Page said they think the new law’s added regulation is so onerous that it might drive some smaller, rural banks to give up banking.

The smaller the bank, the less it can spread out the cost of complying with the added regulations.

The new law’s requirement for banks to boost their minimum capital levels and the prospect of having a third regulator — the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection — overseeing them will weigh on banks of all sizes.

Page said his nearly 30 years of experience in the industry lead him to believe that it may be too much for some of those small, family-owned banks.

“There are going to be a lot of people who are going to have some difficult decisions to make,” Page said.

The new law doesn’t stop at banks. It also promises change for their nonprofit competitors, credit unions.

While Jim Holt, president of Wichita-based Mid American Credit Union, said the new law’s broadest impact is yet to be seen, he sees a few challenges ahead for his industry and his $153 million institution.

One is that the new consumer protection regulator won’t have any direct supervision of credit unions —that will remain with state and federal credit union regulators — but they will be subject to the same regulation that comes out of that new regulatory agency.

The Fed’s setting of the interchange rate also will apply to credit unions, Holt said.

“We don’t know how that will affect our fees, but our thinking is we’re going to have to raise fees somewhere” else, he said. The trick will be to raise fees that won’t drive customers away from Mid American, Holt added.

“I’m sure as this begins tumbling through the regulatory system ... there will be other things that pop up that will be unintended,” he said.

For now, bankers said all they can do is prepare to adapt, even though not everything is clear about how their industry will have to change.

“What we’re working on is how to mitigate some of the impact, making sure customers are in the right products, that we’re doing a good job of understanding their needs and making sure we can serve them in all the ways we can,” Commerce’s Clevenger said.

David Harris, CEO of $38 million RelianzBank, is resigned to the idea that no matter the year, regulatory change is a constant in the banking business.

“You have to adapt to it and learn to manage it,” Harris said. “It’s a fact of life.”

Intrust’s Chandler said he’s trying to look at the coming changes in a positive way.

“My attitude about it, and what I’ve told our folks, is: Any time there is great change, there is a great opportunity,” Chandler said. The trick, he said, will be identifying and seizing those opportunities. “We’ve been doing this for 134 years now, and we intend to be doing it a lot longer.”

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