Independent Banker - January 2025 - 56

MANAGING SIX
COMPANIES UNDER
ONE UMBRELLA
teleconference calls. The council
is made up of employees from
diff erent markets and with diff erent
roles. " It's important to get a broad
range of employees, " says Hall.
Similarly, in January 2024,
Merchants & Marine Bancorp,
the holding company of
Merchants & Marine Bank
in Pascagoula, Miss., unites
six financial services firms,
including a mortgage company and a firm that provides
compliance and legal banking services to medical
cannabis industries. " We're a family of brands, " says
Clayton Legear, the community bank's president and CEO.
Beginning in 2020, the company reorganized under
a single bank charter with independently operating
divisions. Each of the companies has its own executive
leadership team with full profit and loss responsibility and
significant autonomy.
One of the divisions, Community of Resources (COR),
centralizes operational support for the other divisions.
" We bundled all nonclient-facing functions under the COR
banner, " Legear explains.
He believes this structure has produced eff iciencies that
support the bank's mission. " We don't have the existential
questions of, 'Do we get large and sacrifice what made us
community banks, or do we stay small and sacrifice our
long-term financial independence?' "
Legear adds that divisional autonomy has sparked
better performance. " The interplay between our CEOs is
fascinating, " he observes. " They collaborate and challenge
each other. "
Merchants & Marine has created some specific
practices to ensure ongoing collaboration across
its family of brands. The divisions take turns hosting
quarterly after-hours mixers for executives and front-line
team members to get acquainted and learn how other
companies operate. Merchants & Marine also schedules
quarterly leadership exchanges in which top executives
share high-level overviews of their businesses.
In addition, " brand ambassadors " for each company meet
monthly with " brand advocates " from the holding company
executive team to discuss strategy and performance. " It
gives our holding company more insight, and they're not
just waiting on monthly reports, " notes Legear.
Tompkins Community Bank
created three employee experience
teams-each consisting of three
people-assigned to commercial
banking, shared services, and
wealth management and insurance.
" It's been a great success, " Mastin
confi rms. " The employee experience
teams have been able to hone their
understanding of that one area of
their business. They're much more
prepared to answer and coach
managers and understand the
unique challenges and development
needs of that employee base. "
Meanwhile, the HR operations
and data analytics team at Tompkins
has created a dashboard that helps
managers make personnel decisions.
" This makes sure that the same
fi lters are applied across the diff erent
lines of business, " Mastin explains.
" We're using a consistent lens to
evaluate and assess employees. It
provides a much better line into
performance metrics. "
More tech, more job
opportunities
New technology-and the
additional titles that come with
it-can also spur a companywide
org chart evaluation.
EagleBank, an $11 billion-asset
bank in Bethesda, Md., added
digital banking to its repertoire,
prompting a comprehensive
organizational assessment.
" We looked at our business across
the organization and studied how
we go to market, what will be the
role of customer care and how do we
ensure that employees are trained to
respond, " says Karen Buck, EVP and
chief administrative offi cer.
56 // ICBA Independent Banker // January 2025
Independent Banker - January 2025

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