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Fifth-Gen Wisdom: Community Bank FinTech Partnerships · Leaders in Lending

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You are listening to Leaders in Lending from Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping
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consumer lenders grow their programs and improve their product offerings. Each week, here,
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decision makers in the finance industry offer insights into the future of the lending
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industry, best practices around digital transformation, and more. Let's get into the
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show. Welcome to Leaders in Lending. I'm your host, Jeff Keltner.
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This week's episode features my conversation with Bob Fisher, the president and CEO of
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Tyoga Bank, a community bank in New York State. Bob and I talked
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through his approach to fintech partnerships, why he thinks being effective with fintech partnerships
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is really crucial to community banking space and the future, the willingness and how
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they think about the willingness to pull the plug on stuff that's not working,
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how to make things work with fintech partners things that have gone well, things
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that haven't. Where he's got his eye in the future. And then we
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also talk about their decision recently to set up a foundation to help with they're
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giving back to the community. It's been a thread and a number of conversations
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with community banks recently, the investing in the local community through something like a
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foundation or a more structure giving program. I think it's a great idea.
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Loved hearing about the work they're doing there from Bob, so I hope you
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enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. This is my conversation with Bob
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Fisher. Bob, welcome to the podcast, and thanks for making the time
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to join us today. I really appreciate it. So good to be here,
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and thanks for the invite. Tell me a little bit about you know,
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how you most of us didn't grow We were just talking about P fifty
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ones and World War two aircraft and being in the Air Force, and most
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of us didn't like grow going I'm going to be a banker when I'm adult,
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So tell me a little bit about the path that brought you into the
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space in general, into your role now particularly Yeah. In fact, well,
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I am a fifth generation community banker, which I don't think you know,
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there's a whole lot of fifth generation community bankers out there. I feel
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like there should be like, you know, like the Daughters of the American
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Revolution. We need something like that for somebody who's got a family lineage that
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far back in the banking space. I don't know. I want to talk
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to ICBA or somebody about like how you flinn that, But that seems what
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are unique to me. Actually, So if you had asked me in high
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school or college, I would have sworn to you I was never going to
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be a community banker. So I had dreams of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately
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I found out in the Air Force, or actually in college, I found
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out that I lacked twenty twenty visions. So instead of becoming a pilot,
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I became a navigator in the US Air Force. And unfortunately, there is
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no need for a navigator commercially in aviation today, so was a kind of
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a unique role in the Air Force. And my wife and I were starting
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to think about having kids and decided that going back to the family business of
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community banking was probably not a bad idea. And fortunately for me, I
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was also a finance major in college, so it worked out pretty well.
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The finance that I gotta understand, if you swore off the family business of
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community banking but majored in finance, it's like a little hedging of the bats
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was asking. They went, you know, maybe he says no, but
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I the finance Dan just says, maybe, yes, I think partly that,
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but it was also I was started out as an electrical engineer and physics
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and I did not get along well. So I understand that I finished my
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almost all electrical engineering, but I if it had required chemistry, that was
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my physics I got. But chemistry was my nemesis. I couldn't to this
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day not then. My kids haven't quite gotten there in school. I kind
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of live in fear of the time they get to chemistry and start asking me
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for help. I have no idea what it's most think my kids have all
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successfully navigated school and haven't needed help in any of their subjects, so that's
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they're a lot smarter than I ever was. So I wanted to talk to
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you. You've kind of have an approach to partnering with FinTechs, and how
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you think about the purpose and how you go about that and your mentality around
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it. I think is actually quite interesting and informative for the audience. So
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maybe I'll just start by opening up kind of like, what is it that
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makes you think that partnering with fintech is an important thing for you as a
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community bank. There's certainly those in the community banking space to go technology.
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Man, We're like, we serve small communities. We serve them the way
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we've always served them. It's you've cleared take a different approach, what's the
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driver for you, and thinking these kinds of partnerships are part of the strategy
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you need moving forward. I just think that community banks, if we want
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to stay relevant and stay providing the services that our customers are demanding, I
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think we need to partner with FinTechs to provide some unique solutions and things to
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just remain relevant in the space. I'm not a big enough shop that I
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can't have developers, and my R and D budget's pretty small compared to a
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lot of the big banks. So I think I need to partner with other
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folks that are doing some really cool stuff out there. So talk to me
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about some of the things you've done. I kind of want to walk through
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some examples, because I think it's really a lessertive of the mentality and approach
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you've taken, and I think kind of differ from I hear this from a
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lot of people have been successful in pursuing partnerships that it doesn't sound like the
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traditional financial services mentality to launching a project, launching out product, building a
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partnership which tends to be large and oil the ocean and take a long time
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and kind of you know, have the right answer in mind way back at
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the beginning, and I think you guys have taken a kind of approach.
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I'd love to just use one or two examples to dive into how you think
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about that. Yeah, I think, you know, we've been willing to
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kind of partner with some of these FinTechs, which are virtually I mean,
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they're very similar to a lot of the businesses that we deal with on a
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daily basis, but even some of them are fledgling businesses. So they're financials.
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Maybe not that great, but you know, they're doing some really neat
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stuff. Like we've partnered with a company. One venture we tried was online
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banking to try and do some small business loan origination, and I think we
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were probably a little early to try and start that. It just it didn't
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really work out for us. They were a great partner, they had a
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great model, but it just things never came together and we really didn't originate
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many, if any loans from that process. So I think what we learned
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from that initial launch of trying to partner with a new company of fintech was
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that you can't be afraid to fail. You can't be afraid to say,
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Okay, this one didn't work, let's pull the plug and move on to
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the next thing. And I think growing up on the credit side of the
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house and having my dad tell me that we've got to be right ninety nine
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point eight percent of the time or else we potentially will lose money. So
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it's a completely different mentality when you're partnering with a fintech because you know some
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are going to work really well, some are not going to work well,
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and you need to be willing to pull that plug if it's not working the
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way you thought it would. That was kind of a one that didn't work.
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We've also partnered with a company that does cybersecurity training for our staff.
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They do some phishing testing and put out some emails, but you also get
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feedback and that one's worked out amazingly. So that's right. So I want
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to come back and ask you two things about the first product that we'll dive
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into. The second one. I don't think you know we learn more from
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our failures than our successes in many ways, because you know, there's maybe
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Twitter's my favorite example. As I'm listening to the podcast on whatever you want
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to think is happening to Twitter or access Elon Musk has bought it. I
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don't think they ever knew what they got right. Like that they clearly did
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something right, but I don't think they ever really knew what it was,
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because the lessons of success can be pretty vague, with the lessons of failure
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can be But my questions are twofold. One. When I started the idea
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of sometimes you just have to pull the plug and being comfortable with that,
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and being comfortable with that as an acceptable outcome, it's easy to state that
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intellectually, it's another thing to actually live that in the company. And like
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I think most people, if I were a mid level employee that heard that,
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I go, that's what they say. But if I'm the guy run
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on the project that gets the plug pulled, like, I don't think that's
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good for you know, my career moving forward. And so the organizational inertia,
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the natural tendency for people is to avoid those things, to avoid taking
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those risks, And so I love the mentality, but My question is kind
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of like, how do you actually build that within the organization where I think
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the natural inclination of most people, particularly most people who've grown up in the
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business, where you expect to me write ninety nine point eight percent of the
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time, is to think that I don't want to be involved in this thing
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that Mike get blog pulled because that's not going to be good for me and
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it won't be seen as a success. And that to me, how you
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get the organization on board and supporting people who are taking those risks and making
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those attempts even if they don't work. That's one of the hard questions.
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I'm curious how you think about, you know, building that into the organization.
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I think, you know that kind of comes from the top, something
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that I think I've been willing to take some of those chances and to work
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with companies that may or may not be the right fit for us. But
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you know, you do a lot of legwork, You do a lot of
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insight trying to make sure the company is providing the solution that you're looking for
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that will actually help either improve the customer experience or help improve efficiency on the
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back end. And so you know, and what I've tried to do as
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far as here at the bank is be very inclusive of my whole team,
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my senior management team. So we've we've sat through ICBA has a think Tech
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which is a an accelerator program for different FinTechs, and so every year that
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they've been doing it, I've had my entire senior management team. We sit
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through the whole used to be a full day now to a half day,
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but you sit through and listen to the different companies make their pitches. So
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I think just opening people's eyes to that, being willing to say, hey,
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nobody lost their job when we partnered with the low origination company. It
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didn't work, We learned our lesson and we moved on, you know,
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So I think just being open to that failure. And I think, as
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you said, you know, sometimes you learn more from your failures than you
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do from your successes. So you kind of understood what didn't work, and
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you just have to be willing to move forward. You know, how do
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you think about when you It always sounds easy in retrospect to say, well,
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it didn't work out and we pulled the plug, But I think there's
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always this tension between are we one turn of the crank on the marketing engine
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that we didn't have quite right from this thing taken off and really work,
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or like understanding. I always love that there's all these little saying there's lots
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of sayings. I mean, the opposite thing they've got the persistence is brilliant,
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and they've got trying the same thing over and over expecting the result.
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As the definition of saying kind of go well was kind of mean different things
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and there wisn'ess kind of understanding when which applies. Which is the most simple
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answer, But the question of like, how do you think about understanding when
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you've said, hey, this is not working, we need to pull the
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plug, and when you go, hey, we just need to double down,
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or of course, or the new product that's maybe online when we used
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to be in person, we need to try a different marketing technique, or
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it will take a while for customers to adapt, or we need to wait
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it out and give it some time. How do you think about when you're
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looking at something that's not going well, when it's like time to pull the
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plug, and when it's time to put a little more resource into figuring out
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how you get it working better? So I mean, it's it's a difficult
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call because I think there are a lot of different variables. You know,
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did you not market it correctly as you kind of brought up. So I
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think for the small business loan origination, we tried it for three years.
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It just never got traction and attraction. We did the applications we did attract,
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We're applications that just were not bankable deals. So we just said,
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the timing's not right for this. We can come back and revisit it down
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the road. Maybe the timing just wasn't maybe the market wasn't ready for the
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solution, or there were other solutions that were better solutions out there. So
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we just we made the most decision to just kind of cut bait and move
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on. But I think that decision is it's going to be different depending on
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what you're trying to do. I think if you give it two to three
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years and it's not working and it's not huge burden on the bank, then
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cut the cord and move along too something else. Yeah. I like that
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message of a huge burden on the bank. I think that's another thing that
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I so often see in these partnerships that it slows them down is the sense
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of like I need everything to be so good it could run my whole book.
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Like the sense of the diligence has got to be the same diligence I
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would put my mortgage portfolio if I was going to touch that. You will,
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but you're not. You're talking about doing something different, and that often
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stands in the way of what you said trying something new. It's like,
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well, I put it through such the ringer that I can't nothing is going
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to pass through that, and I'm just kind of essentially made an erirrortight,
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sip. I'm curious how you think about that and getting the organization to think
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about the scale of what you're doing as one of the riskman against in terms
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of how far on the bleeding edge or new of a thing you might be
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comfortable trying, because that's a little different. I think again, at some
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risk organizations that are kind of look at everything as a binary like it's either
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good enough for the bank or it's not. They don't think, is it
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good enough for the scale we want to try, for making for a first
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attempt for it, you know, for a pilot program, whatever it might
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be. Yeah, I just you know, I think you know, you
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need to be willing to take that chance and try something different. Obviously,
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you don't want to bet the bank. We have a certain amount of call.
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So just like we have on the credit side, we have an in
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house lending limit that's a lot lower than what the legal lending limit is.
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We'll make bets with some of these companies and as long as it's not something
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that's going to put the bank in jeopardy, if it looks like it's something
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that's promising that can help us create efficiency or skill help with the customer experience.
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A lot of things are our customers experience focused. We tried a landlords
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security deposit. We do a lot of lending to mobile home parks. They
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all have deposits that they have to keep, and so we tried a company
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that provided a solution that just made the experience a little bit better for those
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landlords. Interesting. What was the other partnership you were talking about. I'd
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love to hear a little bit about that one as well. So it's a
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cybersecurity training that we do. We'd been working with a very well known,
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nationally known brand for doing a lot of our fishing and training, and there
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was a company that went through the ICBA think Tech Accelerator, and they've just
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been a tremendous partner for the bank. The users actually get real time feedback.
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So if you submit something that you think maybe a phish, it's immediate
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feedback if it was one of their attempts to fish you. But if it's
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something that you just think looks fishy and you want to report it, you
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get immediate feedback that says, okay, well, we think that was maybe
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a three out of ten as far as a potential fish on the scale.
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So the training that they have is top notch training, and the cost factor
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was actually I think it was slightly cheaper than the other company that we had
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been working with. So it's just been They've been a tremendous partner and I
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can't say enough positive things about them. It's such an interesting space too,
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because it is one of these things that everybody needs. I do feel a
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little bit like a game, Like as a guy with a technical background,
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I feel like I'm judged harshly if I don't identify the called people and properly
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identifying I called the ICT and I got to catch you that I get run.
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I found wonder day. Was that you guys, or is that legits
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fish You can get legit fishing scams come through too. That's interesting because you
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mentioned a couple of times the ICBA program told me a little about that.
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He feels like he found some value on what's going on through ICBA in terms
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of identifying potential partners organizations that might make sense to work with. Yeah,
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So for about five years, ICBA has had a they called their ICBA Think
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Tech Accelerator Program. I mean it's every year in the past they've used to
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bring ten to twelve companies in that would provide different solutions, either revenue enhancement,
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efficiency, whatever, different fintech companies that were looking to partner with community
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banks. And I was part of the selection committee. I mean we used
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to have to review thirty forty different companies that would hear their pitches and then
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narrow it down to ten companies. And I know they picked out a lot
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kind of flushed out to get us down to thirty to forty that we would
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talk to. But it's really been opened my eyes to see some of the
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different companies, some of the different ideas that are out there to help community
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banks in the financial space. To help improve our business and enhance the customer
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experience. But ICBA is doing some super super cool stuff down that road,
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and I'm really fortunate and feel very fortunate that I've been able to be on
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that selection committee and participate. Have you seen a decrease something as someone who's
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been in more of the startup side version of the like, certainly the sense
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of fintech count its moment and now a lot of evaluations the companies have in
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public have been used a lot in the sense that there is a little bit
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less slow of juice into that environment than maybe there was a couple of years
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ago when it didn't take as much. There's you know, may I has
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supped up a lot of the oxygen in the early stage company funding environment right
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now is everybody's trying to figure out what chat, GPT and whatever Dolly and
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these things mean for the future of technology. I'm curious if you've seen a
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like a change in the number or the quality of people coming into or fin
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techs that you're seeing through a program like that, are just in general over
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the last couple of years, as you've seen some different pressures on the start
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of the environment. Yeah, and I would say, just the opposite.
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For the think tech Accelerator. The quality of the companies that they get year
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in and year out that are coming to try and work with community banks is
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I'd say the quality of the of the companies, the quality of the solutions
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has grown immensely over the past five years that I've been part of it,
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so well, that's awesome. I often do think that the money is not
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as free the quality goes. I mean, you know the nature of lots
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of available money easily is a lot of less well us great business plans and
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less pressure on quality of execution and quality of team. And sometimes you know,
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a lot of the best businesses were really founded when when money was tighter,
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when the economy wasn't great, when it wasn't like the great time to
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start business because anybody could do it, and I think that forced upon them
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a focus on delivery value quickly and operating efficiently. So it's great to hear
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that you have not seen that. And the last thing I asked about this
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space is like, what are the areas you've got your eye on in terms
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of as a community bank saying here are the areas I'd like to see.
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I mean, there's kind of a version that is, we look at the
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best in the tech world and grab whatever is top of the pile. And
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then there's a version of this I think is like, hey, what are
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the areas that we could really use some innovation and different experience some issues within
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the organization. But it's something like fishing education for our employees or from times
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products like where do you have your eyes saying Hey, your areas. I'm
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really curious about things coming down the pie because they're strategic guardas for us to
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be investing in partnerships own well, I mean the obvious one that you just
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talked about is AI. I think AI is going to be hugely impactful to
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our business. That'll just provide a lot of insight and should make things easier
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for both customers and bankers on the back end. I guess the thing that
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really kind of piques my interest as far as where the industry is going is
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getting better insights into the data that we have. I mean, we have
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so much transactional information and customer information, yet as a community banker, I
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have zero idea how to use that information. And I've seen some solutions that
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are getting better as far as trying to pull that data out so we can
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be a lot more targeted as far as who we focus and advertise to and
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promote products to. I think we need to be a lot smarter and focused
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on trying to get new business and finding clients that look like our very successful
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clients. And I think some analytics into some of the data that we have
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will really provide those insights. And that's that's what gets me excited about the
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future. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this. I've said for a
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while that the and I think chat GPT has played this that the chat bots
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were sucking up all the AI oxygen, this idea that I was going to
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chat with some super human intelligence, and chatt GPT can feel that way,
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and sometimes it feels like I'm talking to a moody teenager. So just kind
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of depends on on how you get it. But I do think the idea
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of more basic models looking at and drawing insights from data and helping you make
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smarter decisions about who to market to or who to put in certain products,
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and what risk levels are that are really available and the capabilities that are out
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there today and they're just waiting to be deployed against the data sets of community
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banks or other financial institutions that have a tremendous amount of value provide without having
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to feel like you're dealing with this question about like this consciousness emerging in a
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chatbot or not, which is a fascinating debate, but not really the one
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we have to have a debate about to go and say, hey, I
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got a pile, this is the data that I know, tell me something.
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Can you think what the something should be that I can do it?
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That's a think a easier problem solved other than AI. Are there other areas
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like product categories you're interested in getting into, or digital capabilities or things that
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you're saying, Hey, this is really an area we'd love to see some
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ability to announce. I mean, I think there's some great solutions out there
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as far as online account opening for both low and deposit side. We're looking
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at that now to find out some kind of best in class solutions that work
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for our bank. Unfortunately, most community banks, we have our major core
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processors that do most of our back office work, and oftentimes their solutions are
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not necessarily the best solutions that are out there on the market. So we're
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trying to figure out what's the best solution and how to integrate it into our
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core. So that's a challenge for a lot of us. Yeah, the
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integration to the core and that providing that seamless cross product experience can be none
20:52
in trivial and everybody is struggling with with exactly how to do that. Before
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I let you go, I did want to dive into one other area that
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was I will say unique, except that I had a similar conversation with another
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guest was a couple of weeks ago, which was, you guys have started
21:04
a charitable foundation within the insisue. Tell me a little bit about how that
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works, what the impetus was for doing that, and what it is you
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guys are trying to do. We've always been very charitable and giving to our
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community, and probably five or six years ago, I wanted to formalize our
21:19
giving and we created this charitable foundation to get back to our community. I
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mean, as a community bank, our success is so dependent upon our community,
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and they've you know, so our bank's been here for one hundred and
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sixty years next year, and so I just thought, you know what a
21:36
better way to we put five percent of our net income. We donated directly
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to the foundation, which gives back to our community. We do quarterly granting
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cycles every year, so we get people that make a requests to get grants
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from the Foundation, and it's great to see some of the projects that really
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help improve life in our local community, which is truly what it's all about
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with the foundation. So I want the foundation able to outlive the bank.
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So I always found it to be one of the really interesting unique elements of
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community banks was that the direct connection to the community that serve and a more
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deep embtting in a way that digital banks or even large national banks just they're
22:18
so big there's a loss about direct connection. So I think it's really really
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a great idea. I'm curious, how do you think about managing One of
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the questions I always get is like the number of organs that can call either
22:30
you is the head of the bank, or you know, it's like calling
22:33
up some random account managering. Hey, my son's Little league team is fundraising?
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You know, like, how do you think about the criteria or the
22:40
process by which you figure out It's kind of nice to have an official process
22:44
to go, Hey, I can't like just write a check out of my
22:45
expense account and support a little league or bake sale or whatever. There's a
22:49
process for that offloads, but it does mean you need some group or process
22:53
or criteria by which you decide where you do and don't and how you allocate
22:57
those funds. How do you guys think about that? The process? It's
23:00
actually it's helped us tremendously because it does formalize that whole process of how people
23:06
if they want to get money from the foundation and from the bank, we
23:10
can direct them to the website. There's a whole process of application form that
23:15
they have to fill out. You have to be a certified non profit company
23:19
to be able to get funds. So no, it's really helped to formalize
23:22
the process for us so that I don't get somebody that's just calling me,
23:26
and if they do call me, I can refer them over to the website
23:30
to complete the application. In fact, typically I am clean shaven, so
23:34
every year we do a no shave November and we do a five K that
23:38
we do to raise money in awareness for prostate cancer. So I can't stand
23:45
not shaving. This is very unnatural for me, but it's what I do
23:48
for the month of November. So and you do the full beard, though
23:51
not just I know the guys do the mustache, but that always looks like
23:53
the pictures at the end of the month are really funky on the just mustache
23:56
guys. So you want full beer for November, Well, see, I
24:00
may have to shave the sides and go to the go tea or something for
24:03
it starts to aching and then I just hardly get used to I think guys
24:07
when it gets to the end, there's like they try three different looks.
24:10
Right that it's grown in. Now I want to go full beard, go
24:12
tea. Just the mustache just for kicks for a day or two. But
24:15
I'm with you. Every time we're on vacation. My wife's like, you
24:18
don't need to shave it, but after three four days, like what I
24:21
want to share? Yeah, how need to be clean shaven. So it's
24:26
not for everybody. Very cool. Why I love the work with the Foundation.
24:30
I think it's a great model that I hope other financial institutions take up.
24:33
It's really interesting that I've had two guests recently talking about doing this.
24:36
I think it's it's a great approach to supporting the communities. We're working with
24:40
another fintech company that will help with a round up program on your debit card.
24:45
When you spend on your debit card, it will automatically round up and
24:48
people will be able to donate that money to their favorite local charity. Which
24:52
is the thing that really tied it in for us was that they could make
24:56
it to a local charity. Oh that's very cool. My kids get that,
24:59
and and I've got a debit card, a kid's debit card for them,
25:02
and they round up, but don't go to charity. How it goes
25:03
into their savings accounts. We're teaching the basic saving behavior, but maybe as
25:08
they get a little bit older, we'll move into these you built up some
25:11
savings outside to think about, you know how we round up your milkshake from
25:15
four to fifty to five and put fifty cents into a charitable cause. So
25:18
they start to get a sense of you know what that looks like. That's
25:22
a very cool program, Bob, I got three questions I like to ask
25:25
everybody at the end of this podcast, and I feel like we kind of
25:27
it's about time to do that. So are you ready for them? Yeah?
25:30
Sure, and excellent. The first question is what's the best piece of
25:33
career advice you've ever gotten. So very early in my career here at the
25:37
bank, with one of our senior managers, he sat me down one time
25:41
and he said, Bob, you know, sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness
25:45
than it is to ask for permission. So that has stuck with me through
25:48
my entire career as far as sometimes it's just easier to do something and ask
25:53
for forgiveness down the road than it is to ask for permission on the front
25:56
end. And I think that served us pretty well. That's a fascinating piece
26:00
of advice, but both because I've gotten it in my career and love it,
26:03
and I don't think anybody in the banking industry have asked this question has
26:07
given that advice because it feels very counter to the general financial services but pro
26:12
me, I won't tell your chief risk officer that you gave the ask for
26:15
forgive. It's not for permission answer. But it's fascinating to hear that from
26:19
someone in this space because it does feel counter to the natural inclination. But
26:22
it's something if you're in the technology space, it's one of the most common,
26:26
you know, things you'll hear people talk about some version of this,
26:30
just do it and ask for you know, figure out the rest later somebody
26:33
doesn't like it. Don't go around and asking people for parciaus. It's served
26:37
you well in this industry though, So I love to hear that. And
26:38
I think you know the other thing too. Sometimes, like with my compliance
26:41
officer, I'll be like, tell me how we do something, don't tell
26:45
me why we can't do it, you know, I mean, yeah,
26:48
if you've got a compliance officer that can operate that way, I think that's
26:51
I think of the compliance officers and lawyers in similar roles, and the best
26:55
lawyers I've met understand what the word counsel means, and they kind of go,
26:57
my job is to help you find a to do it within the bounds
27:00
of the law, not to just sit around and say no. And so
27:03
when you give me something that you can't do, it's not my job so
27:04
you can't do that. Is to figure out what's a version of this that
27:07
we can do, what are the underlying objectives, how do we find it
27:10
way to get that? It's not like you've got a good culture there,
27:11
because that's I think one of the key things to me and those functions that
27:15
can turn into big nos is when they're really trying to be how do we
27:18
get to yes? Yep, excellent. My second question is what's the best
27:21
advice here ever gotten about the general banking or consumer banking community banking space.
27:26
I was thinking about this one pretty hard, and you know, just that
27:29
we are a service based business and that every decision we make should be customer
27:34
centric. We should think about the impact to the customer, because that's truly
27:40
As a community bank, I am totally a relationship based and if I'm not
27:44
thinking about how a decision is going to impact my customer, then I'm not
27:48
doing my job. I just think we need to be so customer focused and
27:52
make sure that we're making decisions that are based on how that's going to make
27:56
ultimately the impact of the customer. Ask how do you do drive? I
28:00
think it's such a great answer, And I just finished reading Sam Walton's biography,
28:03
and he probably embodied dis mentality more than any business executive in history.
28:07
I mean, I talk to more customers on a weekly basis than most of
28:11
us do in a lifetime the way he operated. But you know what strikes
28:15
me is it's easy to say that and then it's also easy to have somebody
28:18
running a lending program who gets the numbers on approval rates and lost rates and
28:22
whatever, and it's looking at and it's so easy to in this business.
28:25
It can be summarizing dozens of facts and figures and choices and how we can
28:30
figure returns on investment with our lending portfolio. That you lose sight of the
28:33
person at the end of the what I mean, I think it's it happens
28:37
quite a bit actually, particularly larger institutions. And I'm curious how you think
28:40
about, particularly for your mid level people, right who can who have gotten
28:42
beyond day to day interaction with customers maybe and they're running a larger program,
28:47
how you help them maintain that focus on the end customer as the ultimate thing,
28:51
and how you make that a priority within the organization, because it feels
28:53
like the kind of thing it's easy to lose, particularly as you get a
28:56
layer or two within the organization removed from sitting across the desk for customer every
29:00
day. Yeah, and I think the beauty of being a We're a small
29:03
community bank. I've got about one hundred employees on staff. We're pretty flat
29:07
organization, so everybody gets to talk to customers on the regular. It's just
29:11
part of life. It's just part of our culture, part of our life
29:15
of how we operate here. So I think, you know, you just
29:18
continue to emphasize that. You can never not emphasize it when you're around people,
29:22
because repetition just continues to build that culture. So and it's easy to
29:26
forget looking at operational sides of the bank. There's things that will make our
29:30
lives a hell of a lot easier, but it may not be a great
29:33
impact to the customers. So we've had to make some of those tough choices.
29:37
I think it's a great point. I always love that as a kind
29:40
of core piece of advice. All Right, my last question, what is
29:42
one bold prediction for the future. So I was going to say I was
29:47
going to make a sports guest and say the Yankees will win the World Series
29:49
next year, but looking at how they played this year, that's probably not
29:53
going to happen. So my bold prediction is that community banking will continue to
29:59
be the partner of choice for small businesses throughout this country. I think based
30:04
on our relationship, business model, innovative solutions, and our agility, that
30:11
will win the day for community banking with small business. It's a great bullet
30:15
prediction. Add to it that I think small business will continue to be the
30:18
backbone of the American economists. You put those two together. Thanks for two
30:22
pretty important industries to support the American worker of the American consumer. SID can't
30:26
think of a much better place to end it than that, Bob, Thanks
30:29
again for making the time. I really appreciate. I appreciate the time,
30:32
and it's been a good conversation. Thanks. Upstart partners with banks and credit
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