Adrenaline’s Sean Keathley, President & CEO, and Gina Bleedorn, Chief Experience Officer, present to CEOs of community banks about pivoting now for a sustainable future
Wednesday, May 20, 2020 – In mid-May, Adrenaline’s Sean Keathley and Gina Bleedorn presented a webinar to Sheshunoff Consulting’s Bankers Web, a learning community for community bank CEOs, about banking in our current moment. In the New Covid Reality: How Community Banks Can Navigate to Survive and Thrive Sean and Gina describe an industry in flux even before the arrival of our current crisis, a landscape where the big banks dominated with their branch networks and digital sophistication.
Yet, what is bubbling to the top in this critical moment is not the time-saving measures that the big institutions were banking on. It’s the trust people have in their community banks that seems to matter more. A series on Believe in Banking delves deeper into concepts from the webinar. How Banking is Building Trust Through Their COVID-19 Response explores how serving communities in a pandemic provides banks and credit unions with a rich opportunity to reaffirm people’s trust.
Community institutions are demonstrating their values by providing what people need now. Sean says, “One of the unique strengths community banks have is trust. People rely on their banks and credit unions in a moment like this for financial resources, like PPP loans. People may not know this but banks with assets under $10 billion – a category of banks that is only 13% of the market share – completed 40% of the PPP loans through April 30.” That kind of commitment will help carry banks into the future.
On time versus trust, Gina says community banks have an opportunity to deepen their relationships. She says, “We’re in sort of this weird space where time is fluid. Many people don’t even know what day it is in their new Shelter-at-Home lives. We’re willing to wait for things that even a few months ago, would have been something we thought we needed immediately. What people really want now is reassurance that comes from a trusting relationship. Smaller financial institutions were made for this moment.”
Stay tuned for the second article on trust in Believe in Banking’s Weekly Feature. Powered the experts at Adrenaline, Believe in Banking is empowering the financial industry in their mission to make a meaningful impact on overcoming the current crisis and advancing a better future for all. Do you need help reopening your branches? Email covidready@adrenalinex.com for post-Covid branch readiness solutions that can help. We’d also love to hear your thoughts about Believe in Banking. Email ideas@believeinbanking.com and be sure to follow our social channels to keep the conversations going on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Adrenaline is an experience design agency that creates and implements end-to-end branded experiences through creative and environmental design. We enhance our clients’ customer experiences across digital and physical channels, from their branding and advertising to design and technology in their spaces. After transforming an organization’s brand, Adrenaline extends it across all touchpoints — from employees to the market to in-store environments. And, we focus on serving industries that sell human experiences including financial, healthcare, sports and entertainment.
