Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
90
result(s) for
"Melby, Todd"
Sort by:
Cycling for a Cause
When the Loan Rangers -- a bicycling team from Kennebec Savings Bank in Augusta, ME -- complete a grueling 60-mile day in the Trek Across Maine, a single piece of candy magically appears on each of their dorm-room pillows. The 54 Loan Rangers also receive complimentary laundry service, tire repairs, bright green jerseys, goodie bags and a picnic from its Range Rover support team before the three-day trek, a fundraiser for the American Lung Association of New England. Kennebec Savings Bank does a lot for the Trek Across Maine: 19 of the 54 Loan Rangers are bank employees or their family members. Kennebec Savings Bank matches employee donations of up to $250, making it easier for employees to meet the $500 minimum donation to take part. For more than a decade, bank employees have also overseen Trek Across Maine's cash-management processes in the days leading up to the race.
Trade Publication Article
California Success Story
Butte Community Bank, a subsidiary of Community Valley Bancorp and the area's largest independent financial institution, has 15 branches and about $600 million in assets. The community bank wants to capture its share of the credit card market, and in recent years it has certainly achieved that goal. Credit card applications at Butte Community Bank, which is headquartered in Chico and located in Butte County, CA, soared 30% between 2006 and 2007. And the bank anticipated, as of last fall, another double-digit increase in applications for 2008. Julia Wilson, Butte Community Bank's electronic banking manager, isn't taking all the credit for those new account sales. Instead, she cites the bank's partnership with ICBA Bancard and its subsidiary, TCM Bank NA, as the driving force behind its rising number of credit card accounts. An incentive Butte Community Bank can offer its credit card customers is the ScoreCard Reward Points program.
Trade Publication Article
Flying High
As a boy, John Puffer sometimes accompanied his father on airplane trips. His dad was in the cockpit, piloting sleek jets for Pan American World Airways and other airlines. Puffer's childhood exposure to flying left a strong impression, and he took to the skies as a pilot at an early age. Puffer's aeronautical passion didn't lead to a full-time job as a pilot, but it has influenced his career as a community banker. Today, he is chairman and president of Pilot Bank, a thriving bank with $240 million in assets and seven offices in Tampa, FL. Pilot Bank specializes in making loans to thousands of pilots who, like Puffer, own or want to own small personal aircraft. The bank's name also works as a broader nautical metaphor, linking the bank to Tampa's historical roots as a port city, Puffer says. The name portrays the bank as a steady corporate leader that navigates through smooth and choppy waters.
Trade Publication Article
Snow Bird
Embezzlement is far from a rarity for financial institutions, including community banks. The Association of Fraud Examiners found that most bank fraud occurs by employees. In fact, the association says more than 14% of all internal fraud happens at banks, with an average loss of nearly $260,000 per case. Dana Turner, a bank security instructor and consultant with Security Education Systems in Pipe Creek, TX, says addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling or relationships, are often involved with employee bank fraud. All prospective bank employees should be fingerprinted, and those fingerprints should be run through the FBI database to catch people using maiden names or aliases in their job applications, Turner says. Run a credit check, he adds. Above all, community banks need to establish policies and procedures. Then, banks should step up enforcement to ensure that everyone, from the janitor to the president, adheres to them, says Caldwell & Co Inc CEO and president Michael Caldwell.
Trade Publication Article
Living the Banking Dream
At age 11, Kathleen Kiesel Flemming collected quarters from classmates and recorded their savings. At age 16, Flemming persuaded her local bank to hire her. The talkative teenager then set her sights on the bank's customers, talking up products and services and, in the process, winning a 20-pound turkey in a contest. In the ensuing years Fleming continued to build a banking career. A few years later, after the successful launch of Frontenac Bank in St Louis in 1999, Flemming gave birth to her first child. Her new de novo -- Waterford Village Bank -- opened in 2006, operating out of a trailer for several months. Its new, permanent home features a design that has bankers' desks facing the lobby. Waterford Village Bank has reached $57 million in assets. It's on track to hit $100 million in assets by the end of the year.
Trade Publication Article
Longer Hours, Bigger Profits
The old maxim about \"banker's hours\" doesn't apply community banking any more, and it certainly doesn't fit First Reliance Bank. On many traditional bank holidays, First Reliance Bank takes deposits and makes change. That's because those extra non-work days are often convenient for the community bank's customers to catch up on their banking errands. Today's consumers don't want to wait, whether at the drugstore, in a coffee shop or inside a bank branch, president and CEO Rick Saunders says. So First Reliance Bank is meticulous about staffing enough tellers so people don't linger longer than three minutes to conduct transactions. With the help of an executive coach, Saunders settled on a formula that emphasizes outstanding customer service, convenience and innovation. In addition, First Reliance employees are trained to learn about a customer's personal situation or business before quoting mortgage rates, CD rates or commercial loan rates.
Trade Publication Article
Montoya's Dream
After a successful four-year stint as CEO at Republic Bank in suburban Chicago, Carlos X. Montoya still had something to prove. The San Francisco native believed banks had largely ignored the emerging Hispanic middle class in America's big cities -- an oversight he hoped to rectify by founding AztecAmerica Bancorp. His goal: Create a new kind of bank for the Hispanic market. In September 2005, AztecAmerica Bank opened its doors. Montoya promised a new way of doing business. In the near future, Montoya expects to propel AztecAmerica Bank to about $150 in million in assets and then expand elsewhere in the city. He has already located 15 possible branch locations in Chicago, each with 50,000 to 75,000 Hispanics living within walking distance of the bank.
Trade Publication Article
An Entrepreneurial Spirit
There were many things Chuck Leyh didn't like about the way big banks treated their commercial customers. Those monolithic institutions would loan money when times were good but not when times were bad. Leyh, a certified public accountant, viewed his relationship with small business owners as consultative, and he thought bankers should play a similar role. So in 1998, he helped create Enterprise Bank in Allison Park, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. Since opening its doors a decade ago, Enterprise Bank has experienced double-digit annual growth. At the end of its 2007 fiscal year, the bank had $152 million in assets. But that growth hasn't come easily. To remedy the business's financial woes, the bank helped structure a comeback plan that paid debts and provided capital to jump-start manufacturing. Although Enterprise Bank has just one office, it has successfully courted clients within a 150-mile radius of Pittsburgh.
Trade Publication Article
Classroom to Boardroom
With an aim towards serving the Lehigh Valley area, surrounding the former industrial cities of Allentown and Bethlehem, just north of Philadelphia, East Penn Bank opened as a de novo in 1991. Fifteen years later, it's grown to $404 million in assets. Like most community banks, East Penn Bank serves both a mix of business and retail clients. Despite a legal lending limit of $5 million, about 55% of its loan portfolio is commercial. Opening a full-service branch at a local high school allows East Penn Bank to shine a little brighter than its big bank brethren on all three fronts. They think the project has been a great success, Debra Peters, East Penn Bank EVP, says. Not so much from a profitability standpoint, but as a service to the community and a way to generate future customers. Lebanon Citizens National Bank in southern Ohio added a branch at the local high school last year.
Trade Publication Article