Barry Sloane explained that like most, Century Bank has been extremely busy. He said, “We’ve planned for redundancy and resilience. We’ve planned for numerous scenarios related to our facilities. However, we never planned for a pandemic and people not working. The safety of our staff has always been paramount. As such, we proceeded accordingly and with caution.”
- We were one of the first banks to close our lobbies.
- At the start of this, 15 of our 28 locations had Drive Through Banking. Not all locations are equipped with drive-throughs, but the ones that do have allowed us to close mortgages.
- People are seeking safety and soundness. As such, we’ve seen some retract from the equities market and place their money into the bank.
- Bank Mortgages – Century Bank granted a 3-month forbearance for anyone that requested. No questions and no qualifying paperwork.
- “Triple P SBA Loans” – Mr. Sloane reviewed the current parameters of the PPP program and emphasized that at Century Bank, the process is humanized; while at the SBA, the process is automated.
- We are fortunate to be very liquid and will likely arrange $250M of loans, with the ability to arrange over $1B.
- To date, we’ve processed over 500 applications, prioritizing our customers and also helping new customers.
- Barry reminded all on the zoom session that debt is the enemy and that people with cash on hand will be the big winners.
- As it relates to real estate deals, the bank president said that banks will not consider deals with hair on them for the foreseeable future.
- Barry was genuine saying that he does not want to be pessimistic, but will be realistic. He said that for now, “We are in a grace period and our future has been pinned to holidays.” He assessed those realities with the timing of getting back to business.
- Memorial Day – We will deal with short-term loss, that will ultimately become a distant memory.
- July 4th – Will become the largest recession of our collective lifetimes.
- Labor Day – We will need a comprehensive societal reset.
