Pub. 9 2020 Issue 4

How did you become a banker? Did you always aspire to be part of the financial industry?
Although I always had a positive view of bankers due to their community involvement where I grew up in Cherryvale, Kansas, banking was not on my career radar. After college graduation I served in the military for several years, then began to search for a job. The father of a good friend of mine, Gary Cotterill, was a local banker and gave me an opportunity to learn the industry.

The last few months have put stresses on banks in ways that could not have been previously imagined. It is easy for bankers trying to meet the needs of distressed customers to lose sight of day-to-day responsibilities. However, it is during a crisis that our best business practices become even more important.

Is your institution prepared for the coming wave of small business bankruptcy filings that will be crashing upon us later this year and early next year? The financial distress that COVID-19 is wreaking for small businesses is well known.

These days more people are working remotely than ever before and many tasks previously done in person are happening online – including banking. Unfortunately, fraudsters are aggressively taking advantage of potential vulnerabilities that arise from this increased online activity.

Is racism baked into our nation’s systems of justice, health and education, or are there disproportionate correlations between race, poverty and crime? Are people too quick to accuse others of racism, or are those in positions of power too slow to recognize their role in perpetuating racial inequities? Is it fair that I posed these as either/or questions, or is all of the above true?

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, financial institutions can quickly realize savings by renegotiating major vendor contracts.

To have an effective Business Continuity Plan (BCP), recovery plans must be based on a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). According to the FFIEC’s Business Continuity Management booklet, BIA is “the process of identifying the potential impact of disruptive events to an entity’s functions and processes.”

Now, more than ever, financial institutions need to stay close and support their customers
Even in the best of times, customers rely on strong relationships with their bank or credit union to support them through each phase of their financial lives. From a first credit card account for a college bound senior, to a young adult starting a new job and opening a retirement account, to a new family buying a house, a financial institution that can share these experiences and customer journeys each step of the way is more likely to hold onto a customer for life through a digital relationship.

Some financial institutions have been criticized in the past for their reactionary — or “fix-on-failure” — approach to serving the needs of their customers. While certain banks have taken major strides in overcoming this criticism, the perfect storm of regulation, competition, and increasing pressure to be a trusted advisor to the commercial customer still lingers for many.