Pushing boundaries

Have you heard of Bank of Bird-in-Hand? It is a Pennsylvania-based community bank that opened in 2013, serving the Amish community in the town of Bird-in-Hand. Aside from offering special loans for Amish homes and farms, the bank has also made special accommodations to its branches to serve the needs of its community, including a drive-through that caters to horse-drawn buggies. The bank also has four mobile branches, called Gelt Buses, that travel to remote parts of the state, carrying with them ATMs and a teller window.

I love this story from the NPR for many reasons. One of them being how innovative and daring Lori Maley, CPA, MBA is —?to open a bank that serves the needs of such a specific community.

Around the country, many other community banks exist to cater to the needs of specific populations (such as immigrants), or their local markets (such as farmers and small businesses). Compared to larger commercial banks, community banks focus on building relationships with small business owners, and they tend to make loans that require more interaction with the borrower, and more intimate understanding of their customers, their dreams and their characters. It is no wonder that, despite holding only 15 percent of total industry loans in 2019, community banks held 36 percent of the banking industry’s small business loans and 31 percent of farm-sector debt, according to the FDIC.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had quite a few years ago with a banker.

You are not a banker (!)

A lifelong banker said to me: “Let me tell you. This will not work. You are not in banking — you won’t understand.”

I was trying to explain to him the demographics changes in our society, the unmet needs of families and their caregivers, and the opportunities for community banks to do more for their aging client base. I was even armed with stacks of research from my team, filled with numbers and graphs that demonstrated the market size of the longevity economy.

Surely, he would respond to dollars and cents, I thought.

But in the end, numbers did not matter. Because I did not check the box: I was not a fellow banker. To him, I might as well be selling Girl Scouts cookies or Tupperware. Because so long as I had not worked in a bank, I was deemed an outsider and my comments were dismissed. I simply did not speak the language and I could not have possibly understood.

How could I?

In financial services, we often talk about legacy technology and how it prevents incumbents from being able to meet the changing needs of their customers. But what hinders us isn’t only the tech; but the mindset. Lines of code can be written and rewritten; but not legacy thinking. We have changed the way we live and work, but not the way we think about our relationship with money and how we manage it. Unfortunately, neither has the industry.

According to a study by the University of Michigan, more than half of Americans 50 and older — 54 percent — are considered to be caregivers because of the help they provide to one or more people 65 and older. By 2040, 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older.

What is our collective responsibility to respond to a changing world?

How well do you really know your customers and what keeps them and their families up at night? You don't need to be banker — but you do need to talk to them and pay attention to what they say. And listen — with empathy and humility.

Otherwise, who are you truly serving?

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赛仕软件 is kicking off the SAS Innovate Conference this week. I will be covering the financial services track and speaking to senior executives on the future of AI, digital transformation, and risk management.

Stay tuned for updates!

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This week on One Vision ...

How does your childhood impact your money memory? How do you phase into retirement from savings to spending, when the future is full of uncertainty and some people simply don’t earn enough to save enough?

In this episode of One Vision, Sonya B. Dreizler and myself chat with Jamie Hopkins Esq., LLM, CFP?, ChFC?, CLU?, RICP? , Managing Partner of Wealth Solutions at Carson Group, on financial planning, setting goals, the role of technology in our society, and Jaime’s journey from his first book, Rewirement, to his latest WSJ best seller: Find Your Freedom: Financial Planning for a Life on Purpose.

We love Jamie Hopkins Esq., LLM, CFP?, ChFC?, CLU?, RICP? ’s advice: “Don’t compare yourself with the universe. You are enough.”

Give this episode a listen and let us know what you think.

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If it resonates, please leave us a review on?Amazon ?or goodreads.com.?

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