Independent Banker - October 2017 - 5

From the Chairman
By Scott Heitkamp, chairman of ICBA
Disaster preparedness
hits home
A
s I write this column, I'm in the process
of cleaning up and rebuilding from Hurricane
Harvey. It's been the textbook
example of why community banks need to be
ready for anything that can come their way,
whether that's a natural disaster, cyber incident
or any other event that disrupts normal operations.
As we recognize October as Cybersecurity
Awareness Month, I'd like to turn the tables a
bit and focus on preparation for any unforeseen
event that could hit your bank. As I've recently
experienced, you and your staff can never be too
prepared for a natural disaster.
Living in the Corpus Christi area, we brace
ourselves every year for hurricane season. It's
one of the trade-offs of coastal living. Like
many community bankers across the country,
I need to ensure that I have a resiliency plan in
place to ensure my bank continues to serve our
customers before, during and after a crisis. Sure,
the regulators require banks to do this-but as
community bankers, we have a deeper purpose
to this mission. As an industry, community banks
are the cornerstone of economic recovery in
their communities following a natural disaster.
We have to be ready to serve our personal and
small-business customers quickly and effi ciently.
One way our bank ensured we served our
customers throughout the course of Hurricane
Harvey and its aftermath was ensuring customers
had access to electronic banking services.
We knew many of our customers would be
traveling because of the storm, and we wanted
to ensure that they had access to their accounts.
After the storm, cash did become somewhat of a
concern for our Houston market because of the
fl ooding and delivery of money. Our issue was
wet cash in our coastal banks. We had a branch
where the vault was 4 feet underwater. I had to
pull out all the cash, dry it and clean it to have it
shipped to the Federal Reserve.
Similarly, I would suggest that in the event of
an anticipated fl ood event, you should urge your
customers to empty their safety deposit boxes so
their contents aren't destroyed by fl ood waters.
Planning for communications during a
crisis is also critical. I would encourage my
fellow bankers to prepare backup communications
plans if both cellular and landline
service fail. You may want to be fully informed
ahead of time of your cellular and satellite
communications options.
Finally, banks should strongly consider
joining Sheltered Harbor, which provides
proactive, rapid restoration of customer account
data after a major event if your recovery plans
fail. Sheltered Harbor combines secure data
storage with a cooperative recovery plan to get
your customers through your outage. By storing
your institution's data in Sheltered Harbor's
industry-standard format, a peer institution
or core service provider can restore your
customers' account information.
I am thankful that our bank and, more importantly,
my employees and customers survived
Hurricane Harvey. As community banks, it is
our civic duty to be prepared and resilient in
the event of any disaster so we can quickly and
effectively serve as that cornerstone of economic
recovery in our communities.
R. Scott Heitkamp is president and
CEO of ValueBank Texas in Corpus
Christi. Follow him on Twitter,
@sheitkamp.
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Independent Banker - October 2017

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