As community bankers, we thrive on discussing our clients' dreams and goals and helping them through the financial journey to achieve them. However, we understand that finances and banking may not be everyday topics for you. Additionally, talking about finances can be difficult, and financial products can be complicated to understand. Financial literacy is defined ...
Consider the saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," those that confront challenges emerge stronger. While facing uncertainty and adversity in 2020, our team built organizational and personal resiliency by pivoting, re-prioritizing, and getting creative throughout the tension. Resilience means staying strong for difficult moments while planning for better times in the future. In ...
As Jelena McWilliams, FDIC Chairperson, stated in a recent FDIC Podcast, "Supporting small businesses is one of the key roles that community banks play in our financial system. The overwhelming majority of community banks focus their commercial and industrial lending on small businesses…These attributes, as well as strong ties to their communities and borrowers, likely ...
We play many roles in our personal lives – as children, colleagues, managers, parents, mentors, role models, the list goes on and on. The same is true with the roles that we share in our community – we are neighbors, customers, members, and volunteers. Our lives are laced together by each of the roles and ...
Who knew that 2020 would be the year that Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other video conferencing technologies would become as popular as food delivery services and Uber? Video conferencing has changed the way many are doing business. Even as a financial institution, we embraced video conferencing technology for meeting with our clients and partners, instead ...
Your business is your livelihood, your second home – and you protect it as such. But have you protected your accounts appropriately to protect against fraud? According to the American Banking Association’s (ABA) 2019 Deposit Account Fraud Survey, banks prevented over $22 billion in attempted fraud in 2018 – preventing nearly $9 of every $10 ...
The colloquial saying “Minnesota Nice” is often used to describe the behavior of Minnesota residents as being overly courteous and friendly. As we’ve traversed the uncharted waters that 2020 has unfolded, “Minnesota Nice” could be used to describe Minnesotan’s dedication to community support and giving, as the most charitable state in America. Nonprofits play a ...
Do you ever wonder how others accumulate wealth or how they always seem to have the funds, or access to funds, to invest in opportunities when prices seem attractive? The opportunity could be something as small as a high-ticket item on sale or as large as buying an entire business. The ability to wield this ...
While fixed income investing can offer the investor less risk than stocks and provide a steady stream of interest income, many individual depositors do not have the resources to experience the same benefits as market professionals. However, by using certificates of deposit (CDs) individual depositors can achieve benefits similar to those from a professionally managed ...
While small businesses are known to be the backbone of the economy, community banks build local communities by reinvesting local dollars back into the community to help create local jobs. And when there is a need, community banks often find ways to help support the community and local neighbors. “Our business, as a community bank, ...