You can’t communicate too much during a banking crisis – even when your bank is not the one actually experiencing the crisis.
After regulators shut down SVB Financial Group’s Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank two weeks ago, community bankers across the nation began working behind the scenes to field questions from their boards, their clients and their frontline staff. They checked their access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window and sought to reassure customers and directors of their own institution’s liquidity position.
Locality Bank, a de novo bank based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, still has ample liquidity from its capital raising efforts and simply by virtue of being a new bank. The $116 million Locality, which first opened a little over a year ago, reiterated these points in a letter it sent out to clients the day after Silicon Valley Bank was closed by state regulators, CEO Keith Costello says.
“We don’t have a portfolio of low-interest securities or loans,” the letter reads in part. “We have capital of almost three times the level required to have a well-capitalized rating, and our liquidity ratio at 54.17% at month end of February is one of the strongest in the U.S. Our securities portfolio, because we bought our securities when rates went up, has no appreciable decline in value.”
That letter went a long way toward assuaging customer fears around the ongoing banking crisis, Costello says, adding, “We just got a tremendous response from clients who emailed, who called, who just said, ‘Hey, we love that letter. We feel so much better about everything.’”
Communicating with frontline staff has also been critical, says Julieann Thurlow, CEO of Reading Cooperative Bank in Massachusetts. Not only are those workers spending a lot of time interacting with customers, but they also may have their own questions about how ongoing events impact their livelihoods.
“Not every teller reads The Wall Street Journal,” Thurlow says. “So make sure that you actually communicate with them as well because there was a level of uncertainty … ‘Is the banking community in trouble?’”
Some community bankers also took to social media to get the word out, including Jill Castilla, CEO of $358 million Citizens Bank of Edmond. Since the March 12 failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Castilla has taken to Twitter and LinkedIn to provide a rundown of the crisis and explain how Silicon Valley Bank and Signature differed from a typical community bank.
Even larger banks whose stocks have taken a hit sought to distance themselves from those banks. Phil Green, CEO of Cullen/Frost Bankers in San Antonio, Texas, took to CNBC to discuss the subsidiary Frost Bank’s liquidity position. The $53 billion Frost Bank CEO told “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer that the bank has a low loan-to-deposit ratio and roughly 20% of its deposits are held in highly liquid accounts at the Federal Reserve.
Even though Cullen/Frost Bankers’ stock price has taken a hit this year — down more than 10% since Silicon Valley Bank failed, mirroring the fall in the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index this year — Green expressed confidence in the long term.
“Frost Bank’s deposit base has been very strong,” he said, adding “We’ve seen really no unusual activity.”
While Reading Cooperative already tests its liquidity lines on a quarterly basis, the $796-million bank double-checked its access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window after Silicon Valley Bank failed.
“We could almost refinance the entire bank with our liquidity lines,” she says.
Meanwhile, Costello says that a handful of customers made their accounts joint accounts in order to get coverage from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and he said that Locality also tapped its cash service with IntraFi, a privately held deposit placement firm, for the first time. He also added that Locality’s messaging around the crisis and its own liquidity position and relative stability resonated with non-customers, too.
“You find people that aren’t your clients will call you at times like this, too,” Costello says. “We did actually pick up some business as a result.”
Other community bankers also reported a similar experience picking up new business in the crisis. In a post on LinkedIn, Castilla reported that deposits continued to increase at her bank and “my lobby today is full of happy customers!”
Thurlow says Reading Cooperative picked up a few new larger accounts, although she was also cautious not to characterize that as a “flight to safety.”
“It’s not something that we’re marketing or looking to capitalize on,” she says. “This is a time for calm. We’re not looking to create or exacerbate a problem.”
