Sign Hawaii Banking RFP Later

Industry sign banking hawaii rfp later

in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc [Music] nestor lacanto here welcome back for another segment of in full zoom and i'm pleased to announce our guest for this particular segment uh because we're going to talk all things banking from the bank of guam president and ceo joaquin leon guerrero cook and from the anz bank we have clark shaman he is the regional banking manager and of course from bank pacific president and ceo phillip flores of today gentlemen so as i mentioned uh we kind of wanted to talk about banking and of course bank the banking industry was an essential service so you guys remain open throughout this whole coronavirus pandemic and that's really what we wanted to focus on is just how you manage during the um the crisis and so let me start with you ken how did the bank of guam fair how did you guys um handle the uh the virus what'd you guys do uh well when the um i could start back to when the emergency declaration was made and uh you know i guess the start of the lockdown our first response was to first um we retracted we we shed a bunch of branches down and our positioning there was more to protect our employees and and and also the community to reduce the number of people coming around and and doing banking um so that was one of the first moves we did we shifted a lot of our staff to uh you know teleworking working from home um and and then we also really uh encouraged and uh promoted our online banking services as well um a couple of things we did for for a borrower for our customers was uh we did a blanket as soon as soon as the declaration was made we realized you know there's gonna be a lot of people out of work a lot of people struggling to make ends meet so we did a blanket deferment for all of our consumer borrowers that's all of our consumer loans and credit cards a three month deferment we granted pretty much right away without having to come in having to make any requests or or prove any sort of financial hardship we wanted to people our whole thought was to reduce the number of people needing to come into the bank uh again we were thinking safety and and reducing the spread and at that time uh we had no idea what the curve was going to look like so we just did whatever we could to to attempt to flatten um that curve and and um you know i'd like to say that all all the banks yeah we remained open we continued servicing uh the community and and i think as a whole uh our community did an excellent job in um controlling and containing the the virus and and i think that's just a uh a testament to show how how obedient we are as as a community and how well we respond to these things and and and how much really understood the need to to all work together to to get through this thing yeah how about you clark how about anz what was your response sure so um one of the benefits of being part of a bigger group is that we had seen what the virus had done to some of our colleagues in china and in hong kong and in taiwan and so um the positive thing for us was we felt at least we had some go-to protocols that seemed to be working and so what we did was we did close the doors we opened up an additional drive through we expanded our working from home capabilities we added some capacity there but probably the most important thing that we changed was a renewal of an understanding of the mental impact that this was going to have on our employees and our customers there was going to be some physical changes but the really lasting thing that's changed for us is our mindset it's really been um a really strong um newer sense of of of caring and family and um trying to understand how this was going to change our lives was what we talked about the most um we're still working through it we're still in the middle of it you know two months in it kind of feels like a new normal but the future is going to be even different even more different um so similar to what uh kenneth said uh we re-emphasize our non-face-to-face channels um that's um for a merchant customer or a commercial customer instead of coming into the branch it's putting all those deposits in a bag and dropping it off for a consumer customer it's really kind of getting that phone out of the pocket and figuring out how to get this connection into online banking and for the most part a lot of the customers were like um actually this is a lot easier than i ever thought it would be and i don't know why we were resistant in the past and so it's been nice um the customers have been more willing to accept some of these alternative channels and the employees have just been amazing i think that's one thing that we'll all agree upon of the resilience and just the ability and capacity for change for our employees so hats off to the to the people of guam and to my employees right all right and phil back pacific thanks nestor you know the uh we go through different phases in life where we learn i mean we're much smarter with ten than we were five fifty men and when we were 10 type of stuff in this last three months it's it's been like one of those periods going from 10 years old to 50 years old we've all learned so much the bank has a pandemic plan we have tabletop exercises annually and by chance we were just getting ready to go to our tabletop it was scheduled for early march and then all of a sudden it's no longer a tabletop it's a real deal so but fortunately we had a plan that was a basis although which you can use uh clark and ken o'talia and ed and mark uh it uh back in hawaii we came together as a team we're already in a chat room uh the guam bankers association we've been trying to work more cohesively last year or so so that helped us all out so we all worked together and our banks are went through the same thing ken and clark have talked about uh employee safety employee morale customer safety we granted a ton of deferments and we still are although it's really slowed down uh all of us are seeing right now the uh the the lines of people with the stimulus checks as they let out what 30 40 000 checks last week uh not all over in the bank of guam lobby because if he wasn't would be killed so you know he went to the other bankers and say you guys take some of your non-customers and uh we're doing that um and we reduced our hours from four o'clock nine to four uh through the week at six on the fridays nine to twelve on saturdays we reduce it just five hours five days a week uh 10 to 10 to 2. yesterday because of the uh all the checks being issued we've increased it to 10-3 probably we'll go back to our normal schedule previous schedule when ken's mother puts us in condition three i will say that whenever the bank center trouble we go to can say can you talk to your mom about this yeah he wouldn't we would joke about that but we're uh you know we're fierce competitors but we're really trying to help each other as we go through this i know with our employees we've been we've incorporated teams you don't need all your employees at the front line when uh when there wasn't much traffic so i'll work today and you'll work you're off today and vice versa for tomorrow type of stuff distancing especially like if you're in it where everybody's like in a booker uh or a county where everybody's close we're having people work in different conference rooms in the training room uh just to get people away from each other and of course as as clark and kim said use other platforms you don't have to go to the bank to come to the bank in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc gu self storage conveniently located near the harmon mcdonald's we offer affordable rates online payments and auto bill pay for your convenience plus gate access daily from 6 am to 9 pm call us today at 648 7867 for more information in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc [Music] yeah i think i think everybody's kind of alluded to it and what you guys have done with customer facing services and technology being what it is do you think there's going to be more and more movement in that direction where you're going to rely more on online services and what does that say about the future of brick and mortar um banks again um well so i mean we have we've seen what has happened with our non-facing um channels uh whether it's an atm uh online banking mobile banking we've seen numbers just i mean for for so many years banking as an industry has has struggled i mean at least i'll speak for guam uh specifically it's been a struggle to have people adopt to these you know non-traditional methods of banking meaning everyone going coming into your branch is a part of everyone's life it's a social uh setting you know people like to see their tellers they have their favorite branch managers what have you um and and this whole uh situation the pandemic has really forced people to to change and and so that adoption has has just skyrocketed uh for us i mean our we used to struggle to hit i think on our atm and mobile deposit capture or use your phone to deposit a check i mean our need was like around two percent of of deposits were on that channel and now it's it's gone up to almost 20 i mean it's it's really um it's really grown and and i hope that i hope that sticks after this i hope people continue to use it for transactional purposes like depositing checks and and obviously using your atm card and and check cards for for purchases as opposed to cash um so that that's a great behavior shift um but as far as brick and mortar goes um i think with all the tech there still will be a place for brick and mortar i think there's still things people want to come in and talk to a banker for i think the the role of a teller or the role of a bank employee will change to become more of a advisory uh role as opposed to just someone to cash and and transact on an account for you so so that's some of the things we're looking at um and of course with this this shift to tech i mean you need to grow your back office support is another big big piece of it right so we've seen in in conjunction with the increase in um these online deposits and atm deposits and a lot of people are doing self-serve uh tight transactions uh our contact center our we call our familiar contact center has gotten a lot busier so we've had to actually expand on on in that department as well so um you know i mean i mean we're slowly uh reopening branches up um so so we're we're returning to that uh that that mode or that that channel as well but but i'm hoping that the the online adoption does does stick and and people continue to use it because it's just like like clark said it's not as difficult as as people think it is it's not as scary once you've tried it and gotten used to it it's actually uh you know i mean you could be at the beach and depositing your check you don't need to go drive in and and stand in even a 10 minute line or a five minute line to to make a deposit you just no line at all so so it has been um it has been very good for in in that regards and and yeah i mean i i don't think you'll see brick and mortar go away but i just think with the purpose you visiting a brick and mortar uh branch or physical location will change how about you clark what are your your thoughts on this uh more technology less um customer facing and services uh yeah so i would actually say so the customer facing services are becoming online services it still faces the customer it still makes it available for them to do everything that they hope to do what our branches are for are for meaningful conversations it's those conversations that matter it's the conversations about the home loans it's a conversation about what i'm going to do with my business it's much less about making a wire because that's actually really easy you can fill out the information that we need online and you can do most of that online um in terms of investment so investment absolutely has moved away from bricks and mortar to blocks and bytes right so just because you don't see um the bank of the past have been columns and pillars and strength and what you could see in terms of um the bulwark of the bank but that same bulwark exists not necessarily in the walls of the bank of the of the um of the vault but it's in the firewall of the information that we have and that we maintain and we move across the world very safely and securely so course of history you see people moving from money in their mattresses to money in the banks the easier and easier and safer and safer it got and now it's the same thing people moving their activities from in a branch to online the easier and easier and the safer and safer it gets yeah and phil what do you think do you agree with that i agree 100 with both what ken clark has said you know about 15 years ago we came up with a new verb google i'm going to google you okay mister you know we just come up with another new verb zoom i'm going to zoom you nester and it's all a transition it's not like we're we're making a change a change has already been made it's just going to get greater as we go along and and kim was talking about the behavior trying to get individuals to go online as opposed to have to come eyeball the eyeball we're pretty close to society here in our islands and we like the eyeball to eyeball um but the one i find ken the hardest is palau and uh plow of course they're really their internet didn't get decent until maybe 18 24 months ago but sometimes the palau is our busiest office uh of the six and we're trying to get them out of it go online to go to the mobile app they just won't and sometimes i think this is nothing i'm not trying to say something wrong about plow but sometimes i think they come to the bank because it's got nothing else to do and they like to see people and it's air conditioning but the we'd like to get i know over the years our lobby traffic has really gone down despite the number of customers growing but we'd like to we'd like to bring the online delivery is a service and it's much more convenient for the customer it's more uh it's more efficient for the bank so we're going to continue see that grow and you hardly saw anybody in our lobby for the last maybe last eight weeks the last two weeks uh whereas now because of all the checks coming out is swapped in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc [Music] gu self storage conveniently located near the harman mcdonald's we offer affordable rates online payments and auto bill pay for your convenience plus gate access daily from 6am to 9pm call us today at 648-7867 for more information in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc [Music] i wanted to shift now to the real life impacts of the the pandemic of course a lot of people uh lost their jobs are struggling financially um we've got this um federal um stimulus money that's now coming in but um i know that banks have in the interim like i think several of you mentioned that you know you're deferring some of the payments um what do you foresee in the next um year or so with regard to that um do you see more people as they struggle um not being able to meet their credit card their loan payments maybe even their mortgage payments what are you guys what's your pull out your crystal ball and tell me what you think this is going to have an impact on your customers ken let me start with you um i guess it's hard it's hard to say i mean i think obviously as a as a banker you're always kind of thinking uh worst case right you're always thinking okay well well the worst case is um you know we haven't really talked about any types of specific numbers but i think all the banks will will agree that there are going to be uh there will be a need for additional uh reserves i think everyone is is on that same page as far as you know from businesses not being able to reopen um and you know obviously with the tourism not coming back for a while it's going to have a huge impact on on the economy but to offset that and i think what what we still don't really have a really good grasp on yet is is how all this federal stimulus is going to actually support that void created by the lack of of tourism um so i mean at first i would think about it's like oh it's going to be horrible until tourism comes back then you have all t is stimulus money that's coming in and and it won't get us to where we were say at the end of 2019 but it might be enough to kind of keep things going i mean i don't it's not i'm not saying that situation is going to be great or maybe not even good but i don't think it'll be as uh disastrous or as horrific as as initially um thought but that that's maybe that's the up that's the optimistic side of me speaking um from from um from a banker side i mean we are considering you know we are looking at everything it's it's still so early on the the pandemic it's only been you know it seems like we've been living like this for for years but it's only been a couple months uh so so the the um the impact i think are still just gonna start start start showing up i mean we we've seen these stimulus checks coming out now so you see a lot more people driving there's a lot more uh activity than there was you know two weeks ago um but it's still where where that activity will get to i mean i i have i don't want to go on my crystal ball is murky i don't know what what it there's no there's no exact uh image i'm seeing in there but um but i'm hoping that with all this stimulus and and things starting to reopen um that people will uh be out there and and and doing things uh obviously it won't be where we needed to be without tourism but i think this federal money is gonna gonna play a big role in in at least keeping us going which is the intent of it um um it's going to be a difficult road ahead it's going to be a long difficult recovery i i think the earlier and the faster that we accept that i think the better um you know a few weeks ago a month ago we talked a lot about how to deal with the impacts of the pandemic on public health but a lot of the same comments and concepts apply to financial health that is what we're trying to do with the stimulus is to flatten the curve of the impact on businesses if all businesses had the same had to absorb all the same difficulties all at the same time then our infrastructure wouldn't be able to have the capacity to to deal with it just like our hospitals wouldn't have had the capacity to deal with an influx and so what this stimulus will do is flatten the curve but unfortunately the other element that we have to come to grips with is it is going to impact the most vulnerable businesses the first at the beginning um those businesses that had um longer and broader reserves cash reserves are obviously going to be able to bear the brunt of the significant change in demand for their services and products but at the same time they have the time to re-engineer what they're going to do and how they're going to deliver it and if they need to make a change in their business model they have the reserves to implement that change but unfortunately there will be businesses that don't have that capacity that didn't have the reserves um to be able to change and to be able to adapt um and i hope to be the one to say that this isn't going to have an impact but it is going to have an impact and we have to be able to understand and diagnose and be able to support and give the right care to those businesses in the right means um but unfortunately there also will be businesses that go out of business and we have to be able to understand that we have to be able to respond to that as an island community so um i don't mean to be dr doom but i do also need to bring a sense of of reality to the situation all right phil is there anything you can share that maybe he's less less producing oh no uh you know what it is is and it's going to be tough and we talk about unemployment how high a high it is we say 20 something like that but if you go to the most vulnerable as individuals uh the weight server the guy used to work at the theater i mean in that bracket you probably have like 40 45 unemployment and those are the people who are renters uh having a hard time paying their rent those are the people who have borrowed from our banks for personal loans are going to have a hard time making those and maybe for auto loans and then even people who are thought they were okay and were spending money how are they going to make their mortgage loans let alone the businesses that are under capitalized and uh can't take the hit of three or four months of bad revenues uh clark and kenner wright they're going to suffer and a lot of them are not going to be opening up again i live in toulon i look at all the restaurants in there that are closed right now and i'm wondering how many are to be able to come back up and work again but again what it is is and we're just going to have to work through it one went through a terrible time uh the late when the japanese bubble burst uh late 90s early 2000s and the biggest advertisers and then the only paper the pdn were the banks for their foreclosure notices i'm hoping we don't get to there again because you could see you know we had customers coming in you could tell us the first month because they were there making their payment and they ended up having to file bankruptcy i'm hoping it doesn't get to there if it does one of the best things i can say about our banking community my two friends here and the others is that your guam banks are well capitalized we're strong and we can weather the storm as a result we're going to work with our customers as much as we can to help them weather the storm we're not in the business of foreclosing we're not in the business of repo on your car we're not the businesses taking you to court because you owe us fifteen thousand dollars we're in the business of trying to make you have a better life you can wear your children educate your children build that house buy that car start that business employ people and that's where we'll get back to where we actually have when we left there but that's what we want to get back to as soon as possible and help our community because we are part of the community what's good for mom it's good for us in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc [Music] gu self storage conveniently located near the harman mcdonald's we offer affordable rates online payments and auto bill pay for your convenience plus gate access daily from 6am to 9pm call us today at 648-7867 for more information in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc [Music] okay thanks we've only got a few minutes left but i wanted to get one more question real quickly to each of you maybe if you can keep wrap it up in about a minute each um i want to get your thoughts and comments on the page tech protection program and the economic impact disaster loan ppp e-idl which she was designed to help businesses uh as we initially weathered this storm and uh ken can you just start us off sure um well i mean without talking any numbers specifically i mean the intent of these two programs especially the ppp is basically a it was a it was a way to get free money into the hands of businesses to pay their employees again so so so really what it is it is another method of of stimulus the way i look at it um because even if the employees aren't working businesses could get the loans and it's paid and it's free money basically it's a forgivable loan if you use it on payroll gets money in the hands of employees and in turn employees can then go out and pay bills and you know buy groceries buy food so so on top of the stimulus checks it's another form of stimulus for those businesses who did um choose to to take it and and we've seen a huge number of of people come in for the ppp and so i think as that gets out too that's just additional money into the economy that that will be going out and we'll start seeing that circulate right from like envision what phil said um banks also are circulators of the money right we give loans out that those or we give money out to in this case pdps those people go and spend it it comes back into the bank in the form of a merchant deposit and then that goes out again to employees to pace i mean it's it's starting the cycle um and um from i i think from the intent of of congress uh by putting the ppp together which was to have people get employed i think it's gonna it's gonna have a a positive impact on on what we're seeing now and and i think you will start to see more economic activity again it's not enough to to get us out of the funk we're in but it definitely will will help and it will be a a very good thing for for businesses who are open who are providing services restaurants who are selling food uh retail shops who have reopened their doors it will help some economic activity go uh that said it's not you know where it we want it to be or where we like it to be but i think it will like clark said could help to flatten that curve of of the uh impact on on business and and on what the economy is faced with right now okay uh real quickly clark uh what's your thoughts a success failure of the uh ppp and eido has worked yes how about that i'll give you both the success and the failure of it okay so on the one hand the success is a really big success for guam because if you put the tables that have come out from the sba and you see as a percentage of gdp guam is right up there around 3.5 which is compared to all of the other states it's right up at the top like the top ten um so we've responded to obtaining some of these funds really well so that large percentage of gdp tells us a couple things number one it tells us that most of the businesses on guam do qualify for small business administration lending um compared to maybe like a texas or or something like like that that have really large corporations that would that would size themselves out guam for the most part has a really thriving small business community number two it shows that a lot of our businesses and industry is very labor intensive and that kind of makes sense with your mind you got okay so tourism hotels restaurants even our construction industry it makes sense that a large amount of the gdp is is built by labor and is built through paychecks um the last that i'll sort of put to the side is the banks actually have done an okay job of supporting this and i know that there's been a lot of chatter both on you know other talking heads on the national scale about how the ppp the delivery has been a failure it's been difficult um i'll say this it's a brand new program that has been able to allocate 600 billion dollars to somewhere like 3 million loans over the course of like six weeks and so yes absolutely at day one of that and even at day 10 of that and even of day 20 of that period there were bumps there were changes but this is kind of the agility of the nation to be able to not think everything through but have trust in institutions to be able to get people there and adjust the small adjustments along the way so overall i believe it's been a success um we're still getting money and funding through to our customers and i realize that it is slower than they'd hope um because the one thing about the pvp that you have to understand is it's not the money's not coming from the government just yet the money is coming from the banks we are creating a loan we are establishing a credit relationship we're establishing a new relationship with customers and it's not as though we get any money from the federal reserve or the sba yet it's all coming from the liquidity or the cash that we already have um and so we have to go through our certain processes and procedures the the money will come later in the form of forgiveness and or a guarantee from the government but i'd just like to give that a little bit of context um a lot of people have been saying that the banks haven't been doing enough and i'm open to that conversation but some of the context helps out in seeing what we've actually been able to accomplish to support the small businesses here all right then jason's telling me we're out of time but i just want to get one more question if you feel and just as the banker emeritus can you just give us your thoughts on uh is our economy going to be okay in the next few months to a year maybe two years on the next couple of months people are suffering from several years i guess i'm sorry but i can just follow but i know we're out of time but the guam we have we've made 1700 more than 700 ppp loans 196 million and a lot of credit goes to sba and ken lujan has been very good work with all the banks here that's it great thank you very much gentlemen um kim cook from bank of guam clark shaman from anz and phil flores from bank pacific thank you for joining us gentlemen great conversation i'm esther lacanto that's in full zoom thanks for watching see you next time take care nestor bye guys in full zoom is presented to you by calvo enterprises inc