President's Blog

SO WHAT if the calendars date is arbitrary and established by a culture long gone and forgotten.  And just because they weren’t exactly right in their calculations, leaving us with some crazy formula for “leap year,” along with that century adjustment every 100 years or so, we shouldn’t hold it against people who didn’t have iPhone apps and HP 12-C calculators.  I mean, come on, we made the calendar change in 1582 and the colonies finally caught up with the party by losing a bunch of days in 1752 (which screwed up George Washington’s birthday, by the way).  Still, all in all, it’s a pretty good party.

And arbitrary or not, I have yet to find someone who doesn’t carry some sense of renewal and a fresh start when we start talking about January.  Who can’t get behind naming a month for a Greek god whose very existence means doors and gates?

So it’s January.  It’s time to renew, rethink, recalculate.  It is the perfect time to put your house in order and prioritize how to improve yourself (resolutions?) and your world of relationships.  And since it’s a favorite topic of mine, it’s a good time to think about how you want your banking relationship to improve and provide more value to not just your money, but to your overall plan of life.

We community bankers are big on the relational aspect of our dealings with our clients.  You will see it in the literature and advertisements we write.  It is a central theme for any of the associations to which we subscribe.  And it is on this very fundamental truism that a good bank customer should seek their January renewal ritual.

We want your financial information.  It’s impossible to give you input regarding your banking if we can’t see the path you’ve chosen to take so far.  If you’re already a borrower, remember the good old days when we could ask for your financial updates but didn’t really pester you if you didn’t provide them?  Those days are way over.  The financial meltdown wasn’t caused by that lack of oversight, but I can guarantee you that from the current age forward, financial documentation will be a permanent way of life.  Enjoy it; it’s for your own good.

We want to exchange in a dialogue as to what you’ve done to survive the past three or four years and we want to be a part of the conversation about where you want to go.  There is nothing worse for a banker than to get surprised.  I am not going to disclose the secret punishments, but trust me when I say that most bankers are like long tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs right now when it comes to surprises from clients.

We want you to take advantage of the range of services we provide.  You are correct in the assumption that it’s good for the Bank when you do that – several of those services drive either direct income or engender a lasting relationship that is profitable to the financial institution.  But it also serves to allow us the power to correct problems or leverage additional benefits to you if you take advantage of multiple lines of business under our roof.

So hurry!  Make this the best resolution of 2012 and sit down with us.  It will make the celebration of December 31st just that much sweeter.