Independent Banker - September 2024 - 52

customers were dealing with familiar
faces, individuals who were known in the
banking industry. "
Hire local to maintain connections
When a bank grows beyond its
hometown, keeping the community
bank feel can be a challenge. Hiring local
staff is one strategy for dealing with that
challenge. Others include establishing
local decision-making power, becoming
involved with the community through
charities or other organizations and, of
course, advertising and promotions.
" Community banks take very
deliberate steps to make sure that they
retain that community bank focus, that
local focus, when they grow, " stresses
Ron Haynie, ICBA senior vice president,
housing finance policy and staff liaison
for ICBA's Large Community Bank
Council. " They want those branches in
other communities to operate as if that
was always their community. "
The local hiring strategy has been
essential to the successful expansion of
$3.2 billion-asset D.L. Evans Bank, which
has 39 locations across Idaho and Utah.
The community bank has grown rapidly
in the past five years.
CEO John " JV " Evans III says the
bank's move into Utah was not planned
until a group of
bankers from
the community
of Tremonton
approached
leadership and
suggested the
bank open a
branch there.
" That started
our expansion into
Utah, " Evans says.
" We had never been
outside of Idaho
at that point. So,
I went through
that process and
then hired other
" WHEN WE ENTER A NEW COMMUNITY
OR HAVE A NEW BRANCH, ... WE
PARTICIPATE IN INITIATIVES THAT ARE
IMPORTANT TO THAT COMMUNITY. "
-SAMUEL V. WILKINSON,
FIRST FEDERAL BANK OF LOUISIANA
bankers. And then it kind of feeds on
itself as you hire people and they enjoy it.
They tell their friends and colleagues to
come talk to us. And so, that's pretty well
how we expanded down through Utah. "
Evans says persuading bankers in their
new markets to switch from working
at a major bank to a community bank
involves showing them how much more
true banking they'll get to do. Unlike
a siloed bank that requires staff to
move customers from department to
department if they have multiple needs,
bankers at D.L. Evans' locations handle
everything
from credit
cards to ag
operating
lines.
Today,
the D.L.
Evans Bank
has seven
branches in
Utah. The
local hires have helped each branch there
integrate smoothly into the community,
and in many cases, those bankers bring
clients from their previous banks.
Giving each branch a stand-alone feel
Another essential element of a successful
move into a new community is to
make each location feel like a complete
bank, not just a satellite office of a faraway
megabank.
For $3 billion-asset Lake Ridge Bank,
which has 18 locations spread across
south-central Wisconsin, each location
offers all of the bank's services.
" Each office is a full-service bank, "
explains Sue Loken, chief strategy officer
for Lake Ridge Bank. " It has a commercial
lender, mortgage, wealth management-
every one of our offices has each of our
major business line units represented,
so we can offer all of our products and
services to each of our communities. We
don't have our services centralized. "
Of course, empowering the local staff
to make key decisions is also important.
If decision-making authority exists at the
local branch level, customers will sense
that the bank is truly local.
W
The Change
Makers, First
Federal Bank
of Louisiana's
employee
volunteer team
Evans explains that his bank empowers
the local managers to treat their locations
as if they were the owners. " Particularly
in smaller communities, we say to our
managers of our branches, 'You've
52 // ICBA Independent Banker // September 2024
Independent Banker - September 2024

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