Independent Banker - July 2020 - 7

FROM THE TOP
" We've been in the
trenches fighting for our
communities, and we've
emerged triumphant. "
Noah W. Wilcox
Chairman, ICBA
Noah Wilcox is president, CEO and chairman of
Grand Rapids State Bank and its holding company,
Wilcox Bancshares Inc., Grand Rapids, Minn.
We shut our lobbies in late March due to
COVID-19. In our community bank's history,
the only other time we have closed was during
the Great Depression, yet we were the fi rst in
Minnesota to voluntarily lock up because of
the pandemic.
Making this decision was one of the hardest
tasks of my career. Our business model is hugs
and handshakes, and prior to the crisis, I spent
a good portion of my day standing in the lobby
talking to our customers about life and what
was going on with their families. To decide to
turn that off , well, it fl ies in the face of who we
are. Was it the right thing to do? Yes, but it was
not easy.
To be fair, nothing about this situation has
been easy. Take the Paycheck Protection Program
(PPP) as an example. The community
banking industry essentially linked arms with
the government and jumped off a cliff , not knowing
if we were falling two feet or 2,000 feet. I
can't think of any other time in business that
I've taken a blind leap of faith like that, but we
needed to get that money into the hands of our
small business customers.
Looking at the deep trust we placed in the
Small Business Administration (SBA), it wasn't
encouraging that the rules changed between the
fi rst round of funding and the second. As I write
My Top
Three
These news items
celebrate our
successes:
1. " Small
businesses were
at a breaking point.
Small banks came
to the rescue, " Wall
Street Journal
2. " Many
coronavirus loans
given to those
turned away by
major banks, "
Fox Business
3. " What Punch
Pizza is learning
while closed, " Twin
Cities Business
this, we still don't have clarity on the details of
loan forgiveness, and our collective advice to our
customers is, " Be patient, and document, document,
document. " We want to do what we can to
help our customers achieve forgiveness and to
anticipate the reputation risk that may arise if it
doesn't align with the spirit of the legislation.
Yet, despite our concerns about these and a
multitude of other factors, we made it happen.
We got loans to our customers. But that's not
new; it's just what we do. We take care of our
people and our communities; the PPP just raised
that to a more visible level. As history refl ects
on this time, I hope it recognizes that without
community bankers, those funds may not have
made it to the small businesses for whom they
were intended.
So, as we read this month's lending issue, let's
do it with a sense of pride. We've been in the
trenches fi ghting for our communities, and we've
emerged triumphant in helping as many small
businesses as possible.
Let's take a minute to celebrate the small
victories as we navigate our next phase of this
new normal.
Connect with Noah @NWWilcox
independentbanker.org Q 7
http://www.independentbanker.org
Independent Banker - July 2020

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