Community Banking: Transforming Communities with Coffee, Tech and Trust

What makes your bank more than just a place to store money? For Richwood Bank CEO and President Chad Hoffman, it's about being deeply woven into the fabric of community life.

Banking doesn't usually make headlines unless something goes wrong. Yet community banks like Richwood are quietly revolutionizing how local financial institutions serve their communities while competing against national giants. Their guiding vision—"to inspire, protect, and celebrate anything that helps our communities thrive"—shapes everything from their innovative in-branch coffee shops to their emphasis on cybersecurity and stopping fraud.

Founded in 1867 and community-owned by farmers and local residents rather than institutional investors, Richwood Bank embraces technology without losing human connection. While customers can now check accounts instantly from their phones and make contactless payments, the bank has simultaneously made its physical spaces more inviting. Their unique donation-based coffee shop concept has generated nearly $1 million for local charities while increasing branch traffic.

The true value of community banking shines during difficult times. When hotels struggled during the pandemic, Richwood offered flexible payment options rather than selling their loans. During agricultural droughts and trucking industry downturns, they partnered with customers instead of pressuring them. Hoffman emphasizes, "Where you bank matters."

Beyond traditional banking, Richwood now offers marketing, payroll, financial planning, and HR consulting services to help local businesses thrive. This community-focused approach has made them the ninth fastest-growing financial institution in Ohio for seven consecutive years.

Join Host Michelle Gatchell and Richwood Bank CEO and President Chad Hoffman for this episode of Central Ohio Matters. 

View the Richwood Bank website here.

Transcript

Introduction to Central Ohio Matters

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to Central Ohio Matters, the podcast where we delve into the issues that shape Central Ohio's future. Each episode features in-depth conversations with local leaders, visionaries and change makers driving progress in our region. These conversations offer insights into the challenges our communities face and the solutions being crafted to move them forward. Here's your host, michelle Gatchel.

Speaker 2 0:28

Welcome everybody. Got a great episode for you this week. We are talking with Chad Hoffman. He is the CEO and president of Richwood Bank, a community bank in Central Ohio and Springfield. It's a little bit out of Central Ohio so we've got to acknowledge them out there. But thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 3 0:44

Oh, absolutely, Michelle. Lovely to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 2 0:46

You know you don't hear much about banking unless somebody robs somebody or gets you know fraud against them. Somehow it is I mean banking.

Speaker 3 0:56

sadly, when it hits the news it's usually a negative thing, right? You very rarely hear positive things about banking, and that's kind of sad. It's partially our fault and partially just the way the news cycles work Negative always gets the better. Those shocking stories always get the better viewership, I suppose, than just the feel-good stuff. But no, banking is certainly important, but it's kind of got that negative vibe to it. Right, we're getting right up there with lawyers when it comes to our popularity with the populace, I'll put it.

Speaker 2 1:25

Yeah, and fortunately, and so I have encountered Richwood Bank through the years in Delaware, union County, richwood, and I was very impressed. Now, mind you, I come from a small town, okay, east Liverpool, ohio, okay, so you know, you knew your banker, everybody knew everybody. Yep, when I moved to Columbus I got lost in translation pretty much. I'm sure I'm going to say that, but so I was really impressed with hearing and meeting people from Witchwood Bank. How you guys do take such community pride, if you will.

Speaker 3 1:59

We do. I mean our vision we call it is to inspire, protect and celebrate anything that helps our communities thrive, and my team has heard me say this many times. But if the only human being that sees you physically is the UPS driver, as they're bringing your Amazon order to your house, you really don't need a community and you don't really need a community bank, right? I mean, that's just sure we'll take those customers, but that's not the customer that we necessarily get along with the best right.

Speaker 3 2:28

The ones that we do are the ones that are involved in the community. They're serving on different boards, they're coaching baseball or they're coaching softball. You know, they're just. They want to see a stronger community as well, and that's when the community bank really engages with right. That's the kind of people that you want to work with. Like I said, we'll take all customers because anybody can do their banking at home in their underwear Not that you necessarily want to picture that in your mind, but it's just. We want those people that want the stronger community to live, work and play. So that's why we say the inspire, protect and celebrate. You know it's to inspire new things today. It's to bring out new ways.

Speaker 3 3:03

We see a lot of different business models, kind of, you know, struggling and failing because of different technologies or different things. So how can we not only stay relevant to the community, but how can we inspire other businesses to do the same? Right, you don't want the Blockbuster or the Kodak or the Sears experience to happen to your community businesses, right? You want them to be inspired to say, hey, what can we do that keeps us relevant as well. And then the protect side is hey, those things, though, that need to be protected those events that we have, those ways that we support each other, and just the history of the different communities that we're in.

Speaker 3 3:37

We want to protect those things right. We want to keep those things relevant as well. But then the final is just celebrate. Hey, when somebody has success, when somebody, you know, does something awesome or you know, just moves forward, how do we celebrate that? How do we not only recognize it in the bank but how do we recognize it in the community as well? So it took us a little while to come up with the vision, but once we did we were really pleased with kind of yeah, that's what we try to do on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 4:03

I want to get more into community banks, but let's start kind of broad and work our way back News headlines right now. President Trump's making all sorts of changes in the federal government. Fdic has been mentioned as something that they may change and it's floated out there. Do we need to get rid of it?

Speaker 3 4:24

Right.

Speaker 3 4:25

And again, I think what the new administration is doing and while we community banks support looking at everything right and I think that's kind of what the president, what his administration has done is throwing everything onto the table, saying nothing is necessarily safe, we want to look at everything. Do we believe that the FDIC should be removed? Absolutely not. You know, I think the FDIC is the form of trust that everybody has gotten used to, that $250,000 worth of coverage. You know the way that they kind of regulate the industry. Now we also believe in a dual industry thing. We don't want to see them all come into one.

Speaker 3 4:57

You know community banks are big about, you know, keeping things diverse, keeping decisions made at as local a level as possible. So to have options in regulators, I actually get to choose my regulator based on my charter. So I can change my charter and actually, you know, choose the FDIC as a regulator versus the Fed. Now the FDIC covers everybody's deposits, like you hear about the FDIC insurance coverage. But when it comes to who comes into your bank to regulate you or examine you we call it that can be a choice for you, so you can choose that. The OCC is also out there for thrifts and things of that nature, but there's a difference between banks and the way that they're regulated. There should be options on who's going to do that.

Speaker 3 5:40

So, to bring them all into one. We don't agree with. I mean we think the way that it's set up, but to look for opportunities for streamlining some things, you know, making them easier to do. I mean the regulatory burden in the last few years has gotten higher We'll call it that and it always sits on the community banks, more Larger banks, like a Chase. They have hordes of attorneys, you know. They know how they're approaching this.

Banking Regulation and Modernization

Speaker 3 6:04

You know I have one chief compliance officer. She has a team behind her, but these are not attorneys, right? These aren't people that have gone to college and, you know, graduated with a law degree. So they're people that have learned compliance. You know they do it every day. But you know that's why we need those regulators and some streamlined and to keep that burden. We believe in the safety and soundness and regulation, but we don't want to overburden them with things that just aren't necessary. So you know that's to throw everything on the table and say we want to look at it and make sure it's necessary. There is some modernization that I think that needs to take place. Some old rules that probably don't apply to today's you know segments. We're still living by some check rules that were written back, you know, many years ago. When I say many years, I'm talking about over 100, sometimes 200 years. We're still living by some rules of that nature.

Speaker 3 6:52

Those need to be modernized. Yeah, you know, take a look at those. But to just add more regulatory burden without taking care of some of these old things, I think that's something to look at and something to pursue. And I think the banks I like to see the, you know, see the community banks have a seat at the table when it comes to some of these issues and give their input.

Speaker 2 7:07

Yeah, for sure. Well, your family. Well, let's take it even back, Please. How long has Richwood Bank been operating?

Speaker 3 7:16

Yeah, we actually started in 1867. Wow, my family was not involved at the time. My family has been involved over 100 years but we just that's just been through us kind of being there. We don't own the bank. The bank is actually community owned. I don't have any institutional investors, so all of my owners are farmers, business people and residents of the communities that we serve. So we're very protective of that group and, um, when we have a stockholders meeting, we just have one coming up here in April and we get about 400 people that come to that stockholders meeting and that's not a common event but we try to bring that group together. It's kind of a little club we call it.

Speaker 3 7:55

We want people to want to enjoy that club and treat them. They're the reason why we get to do the things we do today. My ownership allows me to take some liberties with investing back in the community that maybe a larger bank wouldn't, because maybe it's not the most efficient thing from an investor that's from New York, that doesn't care. So if you have owners from those areas and they see you investing in those areas, that's going to be something that they support, not something that they scoff at.

Speaker 2 8:21

And your grandfather. You said over 100 years.

Richwood Bank's History and Family Legacy

Speaker 3 8:23

So it was your grandfather, that is correct, he started in the 20s and started working for the bank right out of high school. So, yeah, so that was kind of neat. And he did end up to be president and then my uncle took over for him in the mid-70s and sadly my uncle passed away of a heart attack in his sleep at 47. So that was a shock to the family. It was not expected. Missed him greatly, but that was in December of 93. And at that point my mother was working as her vice president and cashier. At the time there were only 24 employees working there and so when he passed away that was a major blow to that group. But she was tapped as the president. And then I actually was just coming out of working at a CPA firm and got my CPA license and started working for the bank in January of 94. So I've been there now for over 31 years. Wow.

Speaker 2 9:11

And you took over as president.

Speaker 3 9:13

In 2007.

Speaker 2 9:14

2007.

Speaker 3 9:14

Yeah, so it's also been a few years that I've been doing that for 18 years now. So and again, the changes just keep on coming and the growth has been good. So we've you know that's been fun, but I've just gotten to work with a lot of great people through the years, from the old times, when I mean I remember times where we did a lot of things by hand still.

Speaker 2 9:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3 9:32

You know, I was a teller back in a time where we were literally, you know, balancing by hand and that was fun. But I much prefer the computer way of doing it today, day right, you're doing a few minutes today versus or even a few seconds versus.

Speaker 3 9:45

you know the several minutes that I used to take but to work with people back then and then to continue to work with people today. We now have over 200 team members and they've taught me so much. The new generations have been fun to learn from. Like I mentioned, I learned things that I want to know and then I also learned some things that I don't. So you know, I try to try to balance that out, but we're all learning from each other.

Speaker 2 10:07

We'll put it that way, Right, so you know you. You touched on technology a little bit. Yeah, how have you seen banking change for?

Speaker 3 10:15

Oh, wow, yeah, Banking's changed a bunch. I mean obviously from from what probably is my most excitement part is the fact of I think that the relationship with the bankers have stayed the same. Michelle, you know we still. It was a relationship banking thing, but technology just kind of enhanced that. So now, while you still know our names, you know we've got a lot of people that have worked there for years and and, and you know your lender. You know those things were also in your pocket 24, seven. Right, you whip out your phone, you've got your app on there, you can do your transactions, you can monitor it. Used to be, you didn't really know what moved through your account until you got your statement.

Speaker 2 10:47

Yeah.

Speaker 3 10:48

Right, which was once a month, and then you looked at it to make sure everything was okay. You, you reconciled, you know, you balanced it, everything was good and you moved on to the next month and you didn't touch your account from a really knowing it.

Speaker 3 11:02

Sure, you kept it in your month. Well, now you can do it every second of the day. You just pull it up and you can see things post immediately. You can see how those things happen and that to me I would have never seen coming, that you know you would have a phone in your pocket that you could do as much banking as what you can.

Speaker 2 11:17

Yeah.

Speaker 3 11:18

But then to still keep that relationship side the trust part is important, that, hey, if something does show up, fraud is the disappointing part of the new age, right, fraud is so much more prevalent. I mean, years ago Michelle you may or may not remember this we used to have your address and your social security number was actually on your check. I mean it was printed on your check, you know, just to identify the person right, and then you would write the person's driver's license on the back, the number, so you know you're really verifying who that person is. Today, obviously we don't do that from a security and secure identity perspective. So there's so many people we see fraud on a daily basis, to the extreme.

Speaker 2 11:55

I wondered about that, just the fact that I can take a picture of a check and deposit it.

Speaker 3 12:01

Yes.

Speaker 2 12:02

And then I just keep it hopefully somewhere for two years. Yep, you know I'm really good at Photoshop myself and I'm thinking how is this not happening?

Speaker 3 12:15

It is happening. I mean, even when you're now talking about AI and getting into deep fakes and getting into, I mean you're talking about having a video chat with somebody that you think is them. That's not. Their voice has been copied, their face has been copied, and now you think you're looking at somebody on a screen and having a conversation with them and you think it's them. This story has already happened and they encourage you to wire money.

Speaker 3 12:38

Somebody copies a CEO and puts it out there and gets it with an employee and says, hey, I need you to wire $10 million to so-and-so. Well, the person's not going to question it, because it's either their voice or maybe they're actually seeing the person on a screen. But when it's not live, like you and I are today, now you've got to question that, and I would have never dreamed that that would be the case either. So, while the advancement of the products is there, the advancement of the cyber criminals and things of that nature they've gotten so much better at what they do. This is no longer just attacking what we'll call the elderly for influencing them, trying to get them to do something. This is just a mass scale. I mean, there are global crime units that are working on just fraud and it's kind of scary. We see it daily and that's our biggest desire is to secure and form that trust of securing the data and everything that they do with us as much as possible.

Speaker 2 13:32

But what you can't control is what the customers have done. Yeah, have you had to grow your cybersecurity unit? Absolutely.

Speaker 3 13:39

Yeah, we've got five people in our IT team right now and we actually have a lot of vendors that we use too. We use some of the best vendors in the world when it comes to cybersecurity, and that part is very important to us. That again, we have to have multiple layers, but you've also got people watching it, so that's another place. You know, you've got kind of your regulatory burden that you know adds to your compliance team. Well, you've also got this cybersecurity burden. That's. I mean, we still consider it the number one threat today is because somebody is just always trying to mess with you, and you know, somebody is always trying to take your customer's money in whatever way that may happen, and many times it's obviously contacting the customer individually.

Speaker 2 14:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3 14:19

And so you know, try to educate too. We've got an education team and, you know, trying to get that financial literacy out there as well as cybersecurity literacy. That says never share your information. We will never be offended, michelle. If we call you and you say you know what, I'm going to hang up and call you back. We would love you to do that.

Technology Changes in Banking

Speaker 3 14:37

Nobody's going to be offended because you hung up and called back the bank number, just in case the person on the phone wasn't who they said they were. So the biggest thing that they'll do today is they'll go to scares. In other words, they'll call you up and say, michelle, did you happen to use your debit card this morning at a CVS in Frankfurt, kentucky? I actually got that call once. And you say no and no, I wasn't in Frank. I didn't do that Well to keep anybody from getting any more of your money. We just need a little bit of information from you so we can get that card shut off. So they'll ask you for your card number, they'll ask you for your pin number, they'll ask you for different things, but all you're in the mindset of is somebody is trying to steal my money and I need to get it stopped, and most people just jump right in there.

Speaker 2 15:18

You give it out immediately.

Speaker 3 15:19

And then 10 minutes later you're like you know, maybe I shouldn't have done that. And you call the bank and you tell us what's happened. And then we have to take those steps. Some people figure that out, Some people don't. And then all of a sudden their account has been hit with some kind of fraud and it's sad because they're just taking advantage of people's you know fear of being hit and you're not actually talking to the bank and they can mask the number. So your phone looks like it's coming from Richwood Bank. You know they may even use the name of somebody at Richwood Bank. I mean it's creepy how much research that they do the social engineering part to make it look like they are who they say they are.

Speaker 2 15:52

Yeah.

Speaker 3 15:53

And, like I said, if that call you ever get that call, my encouragement is hang up the phone, call your bank back at a number you know is good and then talk and see what's going on and then talk and see what's going on.

Speaker 2 16:02

Yeah.

Speaker 3 16:02

You know, if they call you, you always have to question who you're talking to.

Speaker 2 16:06

Yeah.

Speaker 3 16:06

And it's sad, but that's just the world we live in.

Speaker 2 16:09

Yeah, it used to be. You got it in the mail because, like you said, you got it once a month. Yes, you got it once a month, and they used to be really good at making it look like header from a bank, right.

Speaker 3 16:17

Yes, correct, I remember in Upper E.

Speaker 2 16:19

That happened when I was growing up with my little account and I was like you're kidding me.

Speaker 3 16:23

Oh yeah, no it's check fraud is still prevalent today. I mean, check fraud is still something. We see a lot of Copied checks, checks that are altered. One of the big ones is if you mail a check to somebody, mailboxes have been hit. They've even hit the post office to have some, let's just say, criminals inside the post office that was pushing checks to different areas. I'm not saying that's a common thing, but it has happened, and that's when it gets really scary that they'll take like a mailbox.

Speaker 3 16:50

They'll take a company who receives a lot of checks for payment just, you know, pick, maybe utility, you know, and they'll. They'll take some of those checks and they'll forward them to somebody that it doesn't really belong to. They'll take all these checks and they'll white out the name of who it was written to and they'll put in somebody different's name and sometimes they'll even change the amount of the check.

Speaker 3 17:09

But the check is actually valid. It actually came from the bank and came from the customer. But now the information on it is no longer good. So there's products out there like positive pay and things that match up. When that check comes back in, you actually put out who it was made out to and the amount and if that doesn't match up, it kicks it out and then you have to be able to approve it. So on a business side I very much would encourage to get positive pay. But on the consumer side you can get some things like that. But my encouragement is to just continue to watch your account.

Speaker 3 17:41

You can pull it up every minute of the day on your phone and say, hey, I didn't do that.

Speaker 2 17:46

It's funny and we kind of talked about this before we started recording, but when my bank started pushing me to the app, I was offended.

Speaker 1 17:55

I thought what have I?

Speaker 2 17:56

done wrong. Why are you kicking me out of the bank? Yes, now I'm addicted to it. You know I do check it because you know you got everything. Even your credit card or debit card is part of that right. Well, now you can use your phone for payment.

Speaker 3 18:09

Right, With the contactless payment, you can just tap your phone versus even getting a card out of your purse or your wallet. We have those capabilities as well. That's the neat part about technology, Michelle. Just as a quick offside, Technology has allowed kind of the community banks to compete more with the larger institutions.

Speaker 2 18:25

Yeah.

Speaker 3 18:25

Right. Fintechs didn't used to exist and now we can. As opposed to viewing them as kind of enemies, we viewed them as partners and we partnered with a lot of them to be able to do some of the things that you would have only dreamed before, that the largest banks in the nation could have done.

Speaker 3 18:38

And now your smallest banks can do it too, because you partner with the FinTech there. You know you pay for the technology but it's something that you can use, so you know to be able to walk up for a Richwood Bank customer and tap their phone to pay for things. You can do that, just like you can at other institutions. But sometimes the mentality of people is oh, I'm sure you can't do that at a community bank, I'm sure they're still writing checks. So you know it's that perception versus reality thing that we have to work with. But when it comes to pushing them out of the lobby, we don't like that either.

The Richwood Coffee Concept

Speaker 3 19:05

From a community bank perspective, I've got these lobbies in these towns where we exist. I want people still to come there, even though you don't have to do it as a transaction. And you and I've talked. You know the Richwood Coffee concept. We've got coffee shops in six of our nine offices because we just want to see people. We think it's important that they build relationships with our team members, however that happens, whether it's a transaction or it's just coming into the lobby. So that's been kind of fun to watch that grow. So now our lobby is actually busier than it used to be and that's been a lot of fun to do that. So Wi-Fi bar people come in and do their homework. We see we open at seven o'clock in the morning so people can come to us before they go to school or come to go to work. They can do their banking at that time. But they can also then get you know their caffeine for the day and fuel up.

Speaker 2 19:50

Let's talk about the coffee shops.

Speaker 3 19:51

Please.

Speaker 2 19:52

Because I know that only because I work at a charitable function.

Speaker 3 19:58

Yes.

Speaker 2 19:58

That part of the money or all of the money.

Speaker 3 20:01

All the money.

Speaker 2 20:02

Goes to charities.

Speaker 3 20:03

Yeah, this started up, michelle. We wanted to do this. We wanted to remodel our lobby in Richwood because we were trying to attract new talent you know, we're trying to get it people and they were walking into a lobby that basically was from the 1950s and so when you walked in you kind of had wow, you wonder if our servers were from the 1950s as well right. So so our technology. So we wanted to kind of improve it. But we wanted more people. What could we do to attract others to the lobby?

Speaker 2 20:28

Yeah.

Speaker 3 20:28

And that was a lot of fun to figure out. But when we came up with the coffee shop concept, we called the Fed and we said, you know, hey, we want to do this. And my regulator, the gentleman that I worked with at the time, he says, oh, I don't think we'll have any problem. I'm like, well, great, so.

Speaker 2 20:47

But at the time he says oh, I don't think we'll have any problem.

Speaker 3 20:48

I'm like, well, great. So we, you know, continued working. I got a call back the next day from the Fed and they said we're going to have a problem. You know, there's this thing out there, glass-steagall, that says you have to separate commerce and banking. So you know I'm not allowed to sell products. That's why let's say they can't have commerce and a financial institution under the same umbrella. So for the same thing, for banks we can't sell products. I can't sell sticks of gum, so I can't sell coffee. So he says if you sell coffee, you pretty much can't do it, but if you don't sell coffee you can do whatever you want. So that's where the concept came from. I can thank the Fed for it because it turned out to be a great model for us. We now you do it through donations.

Speaker 3 21:26

So we have beneficiaries that at each one of our locations they're different. I'll mention just the ones in Richwood. It's our local school district, our local fairgrounds. United Way is one of them you can do. The Humane Society is always a popular one. Health-wise, we have the hospital that's there.

Speaker 3 21:42

There's several different things that you can give to, but they're local in each one of our branches. So you give to it and, for instance, $20, you know as a donation you can get six cups at our coffee shop and whatever you put in the cup is up to you. So all the drinks we have, smoothies we have, you know, the frappe type things. We call them snow banks. But we partner with Crimson Cup. I don't mind saying it. I love it that we partner with Crimson Cup and they give us all of our coffee supply. But since I am not allowed to sell it, we're not a Crimson Cup place, we call it Richwood Coffee, but that's where our coffee comes from. So this is high-quality stuff that we're doing and we're very pleased to be involved with them, h and we're very pleased to be involved with them.

Speaker 2 22:22

Hiring baristas.

Speaker 3 22:23

Exactly. We have our own baristas, we do our own inventory. So you got bankers ordering milk and that's been a weird thing to do. But because of the donation model it makes it a win, because people are giving to something that they want to give to, that they support, and they get drinks just like they would if they went somewhere else. But then the beneficiary gets the money that's donated. They get 100% of it because that's what I'm required to do, because I'm not allowed to sell coffee. So the customer's happy, the beneficiary's certainly happy, but then the bank's happy too, because we're getting people walking in the door and many times we're getting people that may or may not be customers. You don't have to be a customer to take advantage of Richwood Coffee, but our sure encouragement is that you know you become a customer right.

Speaker 3 23:06

If you're coming to us three times a week, why not just become a customer? And the next time you want to do a mortgage, car loan, you know whatever that is that you'll use us to do that. So it's been a win-win-win and we love pushing that. So this year is our 10th year for the one that was started in Richwood we have, like I said, six out of our nine branches have them, but we're hoping this year to hit a million dollars in donations.

Speaker 2 23:27

And it was $825,000.

Speaker 3 23:30

Yes, that is correct. So, we're higher than that now and we can continue to drive towards it. We're doing some specials, doing some things. We've had celebrity baristas. That's always kind of fun, where you bring in different people from those organizations that have been at the fisheries we're talking about. They'll actually come in and be our guest barista.

Speaker 2 23:49

Now, nothing to worry about Our baristas are still there to actually help them actually make an accurate drink. Can they help me make the little foam heart? Yeah, see, that's what's so hard, yeah no, that's, that's that's.

Speaker 3 23:55

You're gonna have to learn that on your own, michelle. But no, some of them actually engage in the act of making drinks because they want to.

Speaker 2 24:02

Others just shake hands and they don't worry about it, so it's been a fun thing to do. Oh, fun Well. So in general, when you're in a community, how are you different than a big bank, a Chase or something for someone who wants to come to bank?

Community Banks vs. Big Banks

Speaker 3 24:20

Right, and I appreciate that Community banks just again they're giving back to the community. Again, you see them. They have the local ball teams right. I mean, they got the shirts with the teams on them. But it's not just that, it's knowing the businesses, knowing the cycles. I'll say it this way when everything is going well, you can't really tell a big difference between a big bank and a community bank. It's when things kind of go south. Let's take the pandemic, for instance. Okay, pandemic came out.

Speaker 3 24:50

Ppp was a program that was put out there. You know it was done through the SBA. But the government did that saying, hey, some businesses are going to struggle during this period. We're going to do these PPP loans payroll protection program loans is what they were calling them. They wanted to keep people employed. They wanted to help businesses do that. So they created this program. I thought it was great.

Speaker 3 25:07

Sure, there was some things they could have done, but as quickly as they did it, michelle, it was actually done very well.

Speaker 3 25:13

I hated that there was fraud in it and people tried to take advantage of it, but to some businesses that was what kept them going.

Speaker 3 25:19

But what was really neat was the community banks did the vast majority of those because the big banks just couldn't move that fast. They weren't that nimble. So we were having customers come to us that were working with regionals and large banks that those banks were basically saying, hey, we're not going to be able to get to you, we're not going to be able to help you out here, and the community banks did the vast majority and I don't remember the percentage, but I thought I remembered over 80% of those loans were done by the community banks and it was just simply because we were nimble enough to just take advantage of it, get the systems in place and just go with it, whereas if you're the larger banks, you're the regional banks that's a much harder thing to do in each branch that they have. So again, that was a time when things went south. We had hotel loans. During the pandemic, hotels was one of the industries that was hit the biggest during that period of time, because nobody was traveling, nobody's traveling.

Speaker 3 26:11

They had very low, if any, occupancy at some of these things. We worked with those. Sometimes there were principal-only payments. Sometimes we just skipped payments. We let them not go for payments for months. That was just to help them. During that period we didn't lose a dime on any of our hotels. We partnered with them. We didn't charge any off. They were all good hoteliers, it's just. This was an industry that had something happen. I had one of our customers told us he had a hotel loan with somebody else. They sold his loan at a discount because they didn't even want it on his books anymore.

Speaker 3 26:44

And then he's getting calls, aggressive calls from whoever bought it for collection, calls from somebody that he didn't even engage with and that was one of the larger institutions that did that. They just sold it off because, again, they just wanted it out of the portfolio, Whereas you know where you looked at it, as hey here's a customer of ours. We got to help them through this to get to the other side. We did that. He's extremely successful today, just like he was before the pandemic. But you look at it and you say this isn't him, this isn't his fault. Happens with farmers sometimes.

Speaker 3 27:11

Last year was a drought year. Okay, ohio was hit with one of the worst droughts that we've seen in probably 25 years. There were certain segments of Ohio it was I think they call it a level four, which is as far as it gets on a drought perspective. So some of the yields weren't what they were used to, michelle. And again some lenders might say, hey, you're not doing as well as you were before, we need to cut you off. We need to start paying us off. We're ones that, hey, you've had one bad year due to this, we're going to work you into moving into the next year. I mean, a good farmer is always going to be a good farmer, but if they have a bad year, it's going to be a bad year. So trucking industry was hit a few years ago. Just what? Two years ago the trucking industry was hit awful bad and you know it was rough for them and I had a company that came to me during their lowest period. What you want to do is change banks when you're strong.

Speaker 3 28:11

As dumb as that sounds it's just it's easier for the bank to bring you on when things are going well, when the wheels have fallen off. Now you've got to work with who you're partnered with, and now that decision makes a lot more sense. Right, where you bank does matter. And when things are going well, like I said, there's not a lot of difference between banks you don't really care. But when something like that happens, he was getting pressured from his bank and he wanted to move banks, and that's just when you're as weak as you've been. It's really hard to change at that time. So you know when things are going well, that's time I know it's the hardest time to do it because things look good.

Speaker 3 28:45

But who you partner with is extremely important and I just would tell everybody to take that into consideration, even consumers. You know if you have fraud on your account, that becomes more of a challenge. Talking to larger institutions and try to get somebody to help you. For us, you know you're going to have an individual that you talk to in our call center and they're going to take care of it. We have a very low loss rate, you know, compared to peers when it goes to fraud, and that's just because we've got a team that's on it immediately and you know they attack it, but we're nimble enough and small enough to attack it, you know per individual. And so again I go back to where your bank matters, and making that decision is a big one, and I would consider times that maybe, if things don't go exactly like I want, who would I want to be on the other side of the phone when that happens?

Speaker 2 29:27

And you. Richwood Bank is what seventh fastest growing in Ohio.

Richwood's Growth and Service Expansion

Speaker 3 29:34

It was ninth. Actually, the last seven years, yeah, we've been the ninth fastest growing institution in the state of Ohio, which has been really neat, and I attribute that to some of the things that we've done. Again, you may or may not know that we've started. You know some ancillary products we have. Richwood Marketing is actually a service that we offer inside the bank. We help our clients market themselves. We build websites, we do marketing campaigns, we even do logo designs. I mean it's amazing. We have a team videography. I'm amazed at their talent. But we have eight individuals that are marketers. I mean, we hired literally that's what they do.

Speaker 1 30:05

So a little building for them too, exactly.

Speaker 3 30:07

That's not only us that they help as a bank, but we actually help our clients as well.

Speaker 3 30:12

And then Richwood Payroll we do almost 300 companies' payrolls from beginning to end, so we become their partner on just being able to provide payroll to their clients. Richwood Financial helps them set up kind of like 401ks or their investments, but also helps them individually to where they're going to put their own personal investments. So I can do both the individual as well as the business to help them out. And then finally we call it. Ridgewood Consulting is just starting this year because we found a need for HR type services.

Speaker 3 30:38

So we actually do some education services. You can engage us to come in and teach leadership management. I mean, we just did a new class on delegation. So when it comes to if you've got a business that's growing and some of your managers maybe aren't great at delegation, we have a class that actually to send them to. That says you know, hey, this is how to do that and we do it inside the bank already. So to share that with others is great.

Speaker 3 31:03

But we also do recruiting. So if one of our clients is looking for a person to work with their team and they have a hard time recruiting somebody onto their team, we actually can be engaged to both. You know, try to get to the applicants as well as how to go through the interviewing process to get the kind of person that you want.

Speaker 2 31:17

And I've talked to, interviewed just from my radio day. You know a lot of businesses that talk about all those new services and how they've really helped on a small business, scale, scale up.

Speaker 3 31:28

Yep, and that's that's why is we want the community businesses to be successful. Right we're? We're kind of we benefit from that too, because I'm not going to have accounts with Walmart, apple's never going to have accounts with me, but I do have accounts with the local businesses. But I want them to stay vibrant, I want them to grow, I want them to be successful and if we can offer services and I think that's where community banks can change the model we can look for opportunities and ways to stay relevant, because there's a lot of people out there trying to offer accounts and loans, right From big banks to credit unions, to FinTechs, to the online banks. There's all different places that you can put your money or to try to get a loan. But when it comes to, hey, who's actually vested in you to help you grow and be successful? I think community banks can take that role, but we just have to look at different products and services maybe that we can provide that haven't traditionally been so.

Speaker 2 32:18

Well, Todd, I want to thank you so much for joining me here today and giving us a little glimpse into the banking on the community level.

Speaker 3 32:25

No, thank you, Michelle. It was a pleasure being here.

Speaker 1 32:29

Thank you for listening to this episode of Central Ohio Matters. Be sure to like, share and download. We cover government policies, health care challenges, housing and business developments, transportation solutions, education and innovation. If you know of a good story we should be talking about, go to the radio station website and fill out a contact form Directed to Michelle Gatchel, host of Central Ohio Matters. Thank you,