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hello everybody good morning it's i just had to do a double check make sure it was still uh still morning time and it is thank you all for joining us uh here at the chamber event uh talking with some local uh financial institutions i'm leila melendez i'm the ceo of workforce solutions borderplex and with me today are three guests from some local financial banks and credit unions that i'd like to welcome and thank you all for joining us we can go around the room if you will or the table or the screen and introduce yourself uh and let us know who's with us today i guess i'll go first my name is carl murphy i'm the president and ceo of first light federal credit union hi my name is arlene carroll and i'm senior vice president commercial lending with west star bank max fieronga and i'm the president and ceo with tfcu good thank you all we're so happy that you all took the time out of your very busy day uh and to visit with us today and to share some really important information with our business community um and to uh and to lend some insight so thank you all again uh there are several things that i wanted to talk about today and get your input on and some feedback um but first and foremost we've got uh both a bank and a couple of credit unions on the line can you can we just start with a really basic question like what is the difference between a bank west star bank and a credit union can you just i i often sometimes get that question and hear that myself so does somebody want to just jump on and start with that one yeah probably the biggest difference both are financial institutions credit unions are financial cooperative which means that our members are owners of the credit union banks are owned by shareholders our members vote on board members our members generally crediting because of that are able to offer lower fees but but it is democratically run in that our members are the owners and so that's probably the biggest difference and because of that um the the the decision-making process the things that drive credit unions are a little bit different than what what drives what drives banks and so as i said generally fees are a little bit cheaper interest rates are generally a little bit better but but we're both financial institutions just just a little bit different as to how they how they're running and who the the owners of the organization are very good thank you does anybody want to add to that uh i will say that generally uh credit unions also have some restrictions in terms of fields of membership so this started out historically so for instance tfcu started off at primarily as a teachers credit union uh about 84 years ago and um about a decade ago it was able to open up uh to anybody that lives works worships or goes to school in el paso county um so so it it's been able to expand that field of membership over time to serve more people of need generally credit unions and banks banks will tend to focus a little bit more on business while generally again i'm stereotyping a little bit here credit unions tend to focus more on consumers so for instance we do business lending uh and business transaction accounts but it is a miniscule part of our overall operation so um it's it's mostly a service to our existing members and then max and carl correct me if i'm wrong but are credit unions taxed at a different level than financial then banks are correct so yeah yeah so we we pay a variety of taxes like property tax and payroll tax um but because we're a non-profit a not-for-profit institution um just like the girl scouts we uh we don't pay on our earnings so you know lila one of the things i think that's very unique with el paso and arlene can probably attest to this you know bank ceos and bank executives and credit union executives know each other very well i mean i've had lunch with several of the ceos of banks and and even though you have competition there's still a a good relationship between the bank executives and credit union executives and i don't think you'll find that necessarily in other areas of the country arlene i don't know if you have a different perspective at least that's why oh no absolutely absolutely and and you know with regards to community banks because of course you know west star is a locally owned community bank owned by shareholders and so we're very involved in our community very in tune with what the market is doing here in el paso we do focus a lot on business loans real estate commercial uh and uh consisting like sba and seven uh 7a loans and 504 loans but and the the benefit about a local finance institution again same like the credit unions is that we're able to make our decisions locally through our bank board and we're responsive to our clients needs very good and thank you that that clears it up for me and regardless of the whether you're uh credit union bank i mean you're still held to the same rules and regulations right so you also have to comply uh with federal requirements and things like that is that correct so absolutely yeah absolutely there there's a couple of different entities um that that do the regulation but uh there the regulations tend to be very very similar um there there are some some slight nuances in terms of capital requirements um and and that sort of thing but at the end of the day they're it's very very similar okay and and i just want to add that you know i really want to say thank you on behalf of the community because i know all three organizations we can see you all out in the community you know you support a lot of local events a lot of other uh uh you know organizations and community uh events and charitable uh efforts so i want to thank you all for your commitment to the community because it's very apparent so we appreciate that um so i'd like to move on to uh what our first question uh can you describe to us the biggest adjustment that you had to make at your bank as a related to the pandemic and to covet um impacting this community uh what was that was it internal related to your employees or was it more external related to your clients but could you describe those adjustments yeah if i can um i'll go ahead and go first with regard to westar when this pandemic first happened well there was a couple of things we were wanted to make sure that our employees were safe and so we realigned some of our employees to where some of them worked are now working remotely out of their homes some are working at other branches we of course closed our lobby and we both but our drive-throughs are open so from a safety standpoint that was the the primary thing that we did secondly when the ppp loans were first announced that they were willing to um set aside money for that the government rick francis just immediately said we've got to do this we've got to step in and help our community and i want this to happen within two weeks so everybody scrambled everybody got a team of of employees together form this group in order to go ahead and get the applications out to our our borrowers and and and non-customers of the bank and get the applications out have them processed and get the money dispersed out to them and we all did that within a month and and we still have our team together because now we're going to be focusing on on the forgiveness part but i would have to say everybody came together rallied together in order to get the pvp money out so and which with with westar we were able to uh generate 262 million dollars in ppp loans uh over 1600 applicants and preserving 44 000 jobs here in the community fantastic so i i guess i'll i'll jump in here and talk a little bit about uh what we did obviously we took a very early view on this so we formed our crisis response team our pandemic response team in the middle of march and at the time i think um even internally uh it was viewed that we were being a little bit alarmist about um what might happen but we described it as look you know this is just a great opportunity for us to practice our pandemic response um which has been part of our disaster recovery plan for a number of years and it was a part that would collect dust because we never none of us really thought it would ever happen right um well within about two to three weeks it became clear that this was very real in fact and so we took a variety of steps because we had formed it so early to acquire supplies for the protection of our team members everything from masks to gloves before they became particularly scarce so we were fortunate from that standpoint that we were viewing it that way we also took a point a view early on that this would last about 18 months and so we prepared for the long haul and we prepared our team members psychologically and emotionally for a long uh sort of event so similarly to uh ms carroll's points earlier a lot of our team was mobilized to go and work from their home office we have about 45 of our team that's able to do that the rest of our teams are socially distanced within our facilities and uh we we took a position uh that our lobbies uh needed to close and needed to remain closed um with very minor exceptions uh all of our services are available through our drive-throughs our electronic commerce channels um our atms that are deposit accepting um and through our phone based solutions and so um it really was sort of a retraining of our membership to make sure that they were aware of everything that they can do that way because the reality is in our lobbies the demographic that likes to physically visit our lobbies is actually the most at risk so we did not want to put the public and our membership at risk we serve over 64 000 people locally so if you can imagine allowing people to congregate in teller lines or for other services it would put actually the public at risk so we've continued to keep our lobbies closed we're evaluating it on a weekly basis to determine when we feel it would be safe to open them and we've got some other solutions that are appointment based as well thank you carl i guess from first lights perspective many of the things that have already been discussed are some of the things we did we were concerned both with our staff as well as our our members many of the things of closing our lobbies to appointment only focusing on a lot more technology you know the mobile remote banking remote deposit capture we implemented kind of video banking to where you can be at home and you can talk to a live person and do transactions that way you could also if if you didn't feel comfortable doing it from home or didn't have the technology at home you could make an appointment and come into our lobby and either meet with someone face to face or if you wanted to do it virtually you could do it that way too but we focused externally and tried to provide make sure we provided the level of service that we provided previous to the pandemic obviously our transaction volume through electronic methods has grown dramatically our our teller transactions which now are running through our drive through uh specifically as well as our itms or interactive teller machines is about 60 percent of of what it was prior to coven internally we were concerned with our employees that's why we made some modifications to to the lobbies throughout the whole organization we've actually installed plexiglass and other things to make sure that that we had the equipment available we probably have when you take out the retail staff we probably have 80 percent of all other staff working from home we did that fairly early on uh it was something that we we had very few employees so that was a big change for us as to you know the all the the hand sanitizers the mass the other things we provide that to staff in fact we even as things became difficult to purchase for our member i mean our employees you know we were able to get toilet paper and sanitizer and other things and then sell it to our employees at cost so we tried to to both look internal and external as to the ppp loans uh like arlene said you know some of the direction coming out in the website for the for those loans was was really struggling because so many were people were in it but were able to to service our members i think we did around 10 million dollars in ppp loans and we had other programs we rolled out to assist our members and tried to be proactive in letting them know what's available to help them during these times very good thank you um so something that was a really interesting that somebody that max you mentioned earlier was uh the demographic of folks that have been uh used to face-to-face transactions certainly that's an impact for us at the workforce board we have centers where uh folks were used to coming in and having a one-on-one conversation with our our counselors you know we we also had to close um and have had to force people to to do transactions online and then now you know you're faced also with this coin shortage i'm seeing signs everywhere and so you can't like cash is is harder to come by so how has that impacted um you know your your client base in in one what what do they do if they can't um interact with you or they're not familiar with you know technology how to use an atm even um and and then just the availability of cash i mean have you all had to move people into debit cards and maybe we're just resisting using them um what shift did that have yeah you're absolutely right um the the eco our e-commerce side uh has has grown um transaction counts uh in our mobile deposit uh capture and atm deposit capture are through the roof um the adoption rate of the app is is way up um because it's a forced adoption it's it's it's uh everybody's needing to to move to that channel um generally what we've seen is the resistance isn't um it's simply because there's an initial fear uh because they don't know yet so once we're able to coach them through that initial experience and have them make that initial deposit whether it's at an atm or on their mobile phone that fear pretty much starts to dissolve because it's it's not really that scary and they they start wondering well gosh why why have i gone to the teller line and waited uh for all these years when this is around um so there's a a lot of wonderful ways to be able to engage with their their own funds and to be able to apply for for loans um that can keep them safe and allow them to be uh you know socially distanced from uh others it's just uh a training process so we've had some of our team members um literally out in the drive-through just to sort of help people manage right in the beginning we've had some curbside where um it's through initial phone uh conversation that that we initiate that appointment and then we meet them out for let's say a final signature if they don't have an email address where we can do a docusign electronically which is our preference right so we say 95 we can do through docusign but sometimes you have resistance to having even an email address right so we might still need to help that person out and get a wet signature of course we're going to do that we're going to go out and help them out in terms of you mentioned the coin shortage most of our branches are outfitted with a heavy-duty commercial drawer so we can accept coin that way uh and allow that coin uh exchange to happen um our in branch coin uh exchanges is not open right now that that part certainly our members miss it because we offer that for free for our members we don't we don't charge a fee we don't charge a percentage so they do miss that part of it um but again for the safety of everyone involved our team you know our team members our employees as well as uh our members in the public we don't want to have uh the lobbies as congregation areas and let me clarify that the shortage is only on the coin there's no shortage in currency at all so i don't want anybody to get concerned about that as to the coin uh the fed sent out some letters uh several months ago about coin shortages the most recent one came out talked about how they're kind of recovering from that and it's it's not really much of an issue from from our standpoint we haven't had any problem getting coin or or providing coin to our members so it really has had no impact on us as to the adoption i agree with max one of the reasons we created the virtual offices and our branches uh members that come in and don't feel comfortable using some of the technology we'll we'll sit him in the virtual office and talk to them about it and actually sit there with them and allow them to to talk to an employee at the admin building or one of the branches and and when they come out they say wow that was easy and we say well and you can do it from home you don't even need to come in and so we're seeing that once they experience it they'll begin to use it more but all the electronic methods has has grown dramatically even the interactive teller machines we have in the branches and and some of them outside the branches that the uh the activity on those machines are just just going um much much higher than what they were because of the concerns with with coven and the desire to uh to try to service the members uh the drive-through continues to to uh to do very well uh one of the things that's challenging for staff for example in the drive-through every time that drive-through canister comes through they've got to clean it to protect them as well as the as the member and so there's a lot of things like that that are are challenging and increasing some of the transaction time just because they're trying to protect themselves very interesting thank you arlene was there anything you'd like to add from especially from your um the business clients perspective in their adjustment perhaps to a lot more transactions um online well um yeah so even before the pandemic hit i think um max and carl can agree that banks in general financial institution in general have have encouraged our clients to transition to more automated virtual type of transactions if it's through like for a commercial client to where they they use their remote deposit capture rather than coming through the drive-through online banking transferring from one account to the other or um even um taking a picture of their their check you know through the through the mobile app so we we encourage that before the pandemic hint but obviously there's those clients that were resistant to to going that route and so we've been working very closely with them they can call us we're there to help them walk them through the process again like max said i know with them when we did the ppp loans of course we did everything through docusign but other kinds of loan transactions if they weren't comfortable in and um you know coming in and finding of course they'd make an appointment to come and sign loan documents they could scan the loan documents back or even if we had to go out and get a wet signature we were more than willing to be accommodating to them so i i think this whole process has really allowed all of us to shine uh in terms of our responsiveness to our clients and so that they know that we're there for them through the good times and the bad that's really great i think that that's a really great point because there's you know as you all are talking about transitioning and helping your clients move on to this online world and certainly we are as well there's another risk that perhaps people are fearful now is the cyber security fear right there may be an addition to not knowing how to utilize technology is the fear that perhaps the technology is not necessarily secure there's all these horror stories so a person might not want to take a picture of a check and do that you know even if it's available to them so how are you um you know uh showing that empathy and that that care for your clients and in not only helping them understand that transition but calming their fears aside from the the public health issue but calming their fears from the security perspective that your systems and all of the things that you're utilizing are secure so um well when we're communicating especially when we're communicating with our clients via email for whatever type of question they have or they're giving any type of information to our bank we have it to where whenever we put confidential on the subject line that automatically goes into security mode and and so we have that security wall up and so that's one way of telling them look when we do this and you have to acknowledge and sign into this the secured website that gives us that gives them a little bit of comfort level but yeah and even though even then if some of them still aren't comfortable with that we're like i said we're more than willing to go out and physically pick up whatever documents they need i mean there was times where i meet them downstairs in the parking lot with our masks on and i grabbed the documents from them and um or even go to their place of business but it's but it's a very real especially with the security part um and with what's going on right now a lot of phishing going on a lot of we have uh security measures in place especially like if we get an email from somebody that wants a oh can you please transfer money from one account to the other for me or i want to wire some money we always make it an effort to call that client and and make sure and verify that and we know our customers enough to where that doesn't really sound like them and we'll call them up and and say did you send this email and so and i think you're going to see a lot more of that very good thank you yeah i think i i agree with arlene you know um we use the secure emails with our members so so they can understand that that the information is not available to the outside but i think the other thing is just education you know educating the members or clients on what we are doing internally but probably the bigger risk is how they're utilizing their system at home so educating on them what to watch for what phishing scams are out there because since the pandemic started there's a lot more of those scams going on now than there was prior to and so it's educating them internally on what the credit union does but also educating them on on how they can protect themselves generally financial institutions won't reach out to their members and asking for account information generally that first indication it's a scam and so that education is key and then and then making sure that we have the systems in place to make sure their data is secure and then the secure emails are won uh in in many other ways that that will help them the electronic signatures and others so once again it goes back to education both what financial institutions do internally and then how they can protect their their members and and i'll just throw in here that you know many of the ways that are traditionally thought of by consumers or members are actually fraud is more prevalent using those methods we we have ways to authenticate our members thoroughly electronically with out-of-pocket methods and our systems are have multiple layers of security built in and so if one is somehow breached uh it's just this interlocking system that makes it uh very very difficult uh to gain access you know i've uh explained it to examiners in the past that uh really you know you've got a set of walls with concertina on it you've gotta get through a locked gate if you get in there there's a german shepherd you get to the door it's got a deadbolt on it there's an alarm system on the house and and uh so there's there's multiple layers that are alerting you to anything that changes in the system uh we have internal penetration testing external penetration testing and and the biggest uh risk that generally we see and carl talked about it is human uh it's it's a consumer a customer a member uh mistaking a scammer for something that's legitimate uh or an employee okay and so uh at tfc one of the things that we do is we have a a constant set of um tests that are both physical and virtual um where we are testing our employees for weakness to see if if they're going to fall for something so they're they're sort of accustomed to that they know that we're going to be trying to trick them with an email with a phone call social engineering uh try to have somebody uh you know breach a particular area physically or convince them to uh using a variety of different tactics and so uh they're rewarded for uh for defending right in a variety of different ways uh and because we're always testing we've brought down that human error to negligible levels and so that's a really important part of how i think all the financial institutions that you've got on screen right now are doing uh to to uh to protect and and i think it's also a real benefit of local institutions uh what arlene and carl and i can do that national and regional players can't is we know our consumers we know the members we know the customers so that also allows for less fraud because we know we know these people and our uh our leaders know uh the membership and so it allows for it's less likely to have um things like you've seen it some of you know i won't name any names but there's some pretty big banks that have had some significant uh embarrassing sorts of situations because they're not from there they don't really know the customers and to piggyback on on max of course west star that's one of our our training in terms of security to all of our employees multiple training on that and we do the same thing where we'll send out emails and and and and they're not legitimate emails and to try and teach employees how to respond and and and our level has been brought down as well so i'd like to move on into a different question and we've talked a little bit about the ppp loans but as um in this process design any new services or products in response to this maybe ppp wasn't a risk an answer for was there something else that you provided or you know like a different service or a product that you found was a need well from uh so from at westar and it really it's the sba so we do quite a bit of sba 7a loans 504 loans and actually what had happened was the sba came in and is taken in through the cares act and is paying their monthly p i payments for six months so anybody that has a 7a loan or the 504 loan which has really helped their our customers cash flow situation uh we've also if we have clients who concentrated in a certain industry that has been heavily impacted we've offered deferment of um p i payments or or interest only payments because we understand that they were performing well before this pandemic hit and we understand what they're that they're that this was out of their control so we have so those programs where we're we're deferring the p i payment interest only payments and we're keeping in close contact with them and we're telling them you know we were there for you before all this happened we're here with you now and we'll be there with you when all of this is over with yeah from a business standpoint we were very similar we knew sba lending and so using some of their programs as we talked about the ppp we did try to be more proactive much much like westar in trying to identify which which of our business members might be impacted negatively because of the the pandemic and the economic situation and so tried to reach out to them offered many of the same programs you know if they wanted to do interest only if they want to defer their payments for a period of time in some cases depending on the interest rate looking at that and saying do we need to assist in modifying the loan and so working with them and then on the consumer side very very similar in that we offered in fact for the first few months we we waived many of the late fees on loans we did deferments we did interest only payments in some cases skip a pays but but i guess the key with most financial institutions they they were really proactive and tried to identify who are the highest potential that might have have a concern whether it be business members that had maybe were in the restaurant industry or our our members or consumers from from a retail standpoint that worked in in restaurants or retail or other things so reaching out and offering them products and actually many of those we had in place for the consumers just because of all the all the times the government had their shutdowns we had to have products in place to assist them during those time periods and so many of those products were able to bring back and modify them a little bit and then and then roll them back out to the members but it's it's been very effective and we we've seen and we've heard a lot of positive from from our members or our consumers and and i'll just say uh for us it was probably a little bit unique to the other two institutions on the call um we we weren't in the sba uh realm so we had to ramp up to that quickly we wanted to be able to help um in the community and and there there seemed to be some limitations on the amount of ppp that uh certain institutions would have based on their their size and so we didn't want our community to miss out uh because we weren't uh doing that so we we stepped into that gap we have a really great uh business lending team uh and they're very unselfish they were literally up until the deadlines uh eastern standard time to get things done for uh our members and non-members we we were able to create new memberships based on the ppp program um and and help uh people out generally our average loan size was fifteen thousand nine hundred and forty two dollars so it tells you uh we were helping really small business and it helped them make payroll and it helped them survive um like uh what what carl and arlene were saying you know we we made a variety of different arrangements in terms of uh we understand what each business type is so we understood that they were going to be struggling through you know what whether it was going to be a month two months three months or longer and we and that exists right on the consumer side it was because that's a much bigger part of our business um lots of skippa pays uh we we made exceptions to our policies on it uh where we had certain limitations on skip a pays on an annual basis we were able to extend that because we wanted to make sure that we kept people in their cars we kept people in their homes through forbearance and different loan modifications and we continue to do that as we see that distress in place we don't want that to harm people particularly when it's a temporary situation that's outside of their control we know that on the back end of this the economy will likely be able to recover it's just we need to take care of the health emergency so very similar thank you for that um so we've got a question from some folks in the audience and we talked a little bit about this earlier but with regards to the elderly population that are are they able to if they if they don't have access to the technology resources what accommodations are they able to to see at your uh branches are they able to make an appointment or are they able to actually talk to someone there they're they're absolutely they can make an appointment at any of our branches they can call our our customer service center and uh or call some of our personal bankers personally so and we would be able to help them get through that process and also even if they if they need help at the drive-through somebody would be there willing to help help them at the drive-through the difference like at weststar and i'm sure that other credit unions is that you there's it's not a 1-800 number that you call to ask for help it's a direct line here to weststar and you can talk to a person immediately and that makes a big difference makes a huge difference yeah very similar we we expanded a lot of our retail staff we had to retrain a little bit and get them to work in the call center as well as some of the the virtual settings and so uh members who don't feel comfortable whether it's because of their age or they don't have the technology they can actually come in and make an appointment to to do sit down with a a a representative to to address you know whether it be a loan or other things if they don't want to do it electronically we do have employees who will go out in the drive through and help individuals there if needed once again we we still try to meet the social distancing there but uh anyone who who does not feel comfortable or does not ha e the technology they still can come to the credit union and have their accounts serviced and have access to their funds and we're it's uh virtually identical uh you know everything like i mentioned earlier is available uh it's just the way that we're providing that access is a little bit different if if a member we've we've had you know of course some members that were really interested in uh face-to-face um generally upon having a conversation with them over the phone their needs are met so there's no need to to meet face-to-face they maybe they didn't know that there were other ways to go about it and there's been a few cases like i said at every single branch where we agree to meet them at a certain time at a certain branch we get them to sign uh physical paperwork because that's their preference and that's okay too we we're here to meet members in the way that they need to be met we also just want to make sure that we're protecting uh them and our team we have a responsibility to both of those parties and so um i i think especially in the beginning of this pandemic when things weren't well understood uh you know there was that risk of having people congregate together uh now i think uh our members are very understanding they understand why we're doing what we're doing uh they're patient with the process and like carl we moved some of our other team members to remote base support services so that there wouldn't be long waits for that thank you very good and similar we had to do the same everybody at the onset it seemed like the phones was where um we needed everybody and we moved you know all of our folks into the call center and uh that leads me into the last question that i have before we move into wrap up is what adjustments or what what needs have you have you seen from your workforce perspective is there something that the folks have had to learn new uh like a new skill or an urgency in a specific area um and you know and in addition to some tech maybe some technical skills have you also had to provide some other type of support for your employees speaking from our workforce you know teaching people how to move into the call center and and some new technical aspects is one thing but we're also facing with the psychological emotional thing of being in isolation not being around one another and you know just the sheer volume of the constant work and the disruption itself is taking an emotional toll and so we're having to deal with those all of that from our workforce and making sure that our workforce is not just physically healthy but also emotionally and psychologically any any comments on that yeah i i'll i guess i'll jump on in on this one first um so of course they had to uh we had quite a few people get retrained on call center type um they already understood our products and services because they worked in our branches uh but interacting with people through a call center environment using those queues is a little bit different so we made sure that they were able to do that and then again we were having to mobilize them to work from home how do you ensure that you have the appropriate environment at home to be able to allow for that and if not that we could provide them with an isolated area at one of our tfcu facilities around the city in order to to allow them to continue helping our members fear anxiety and handling uncertainty is what is continuing to impact um i think everybody in in in the community and it's related to uh of course the the global pandemic it's related to uh the economic recession and it's related to uh a movement for racial justice that we're seeing across the country and it's impacting various communities and it's very very important uh for us to recognize that that's that's deeply impacting a lot of people and so this this three-pronged uh crisis um is causing a lot of anxiety and uncertainty and um so we have really just laid it out there we talk about it um we communicate uh often give give access uh to ourselves um so that so that people can really talk about what's on their mind um and we we make it okay to talk about hey look it's it's okay to feel that they're in there is an anxiety right now we've taken certain things off the table so that they wouldn't have to be worried about things like layoffs we we just said look don't worry about that okay because some of them have a job but maybe their sp their spouse or their partner might have had their hours cut so they've got personal fears going on and we're asking them to help our members right so so i think that there's that that they're weighing those different anxieties um and then of course we've got company benefits that uh allow them to leverage professional help when they need that um and and we've also got some informal things so um i have something called max cafe por favor which is where we get together for coffee virtually on zoom and we talk about different topics and one of the topics that we talked about was the pandemic another topic that we talked about was anxiety and uncertainty and how to handle it and so we all had a very candid discussion back and forth on how do you manage that uh and and what we have found is generally uh planning and preparation is a really really good antidote to uh that uncertainty and that anxiety people don't like to feel like they're on a ship that has no direction that has no rudder they want to know that their leaders understand what's going on um and that they're managing uh the situation to the best of their ability and so we've we've i think done that from the very beginning and uh given them a a good feeling that um we are doing everything possible to protect their health protect to protect their jobs to protect our members and to protect the public and i think uh they they appreciate that um and and when it comes to uh the issues around the social movement that's going on right now we've also uh allowed open conversation and an open forum on that because that's very important as well is to make sure everybody's being listened to everybody's being valued thank you everything that max said is is of course what our bank is doing and the one thing that i know meant a lot to myself and to the employees of westar is when this pandemic first happened rick francis assured all of us that our jobs are secure and that uh just to give everybody that sense of comfort that uh that you're going to be okay and that west star is here for the long haul and then we transitioned into again reallocating our employees to make them feel safe of some people that were the daycares were closed the children were having to be educated the clothes the schools were closed and so we worked with everybody to where they could work remotely get their job done and be there for their family as well one of the things that we did is um when we jumped on doing these ppp loans is like i had said earlier we had to reorganize and people that worked in our accounting area were now working on ppp loans everybody came together and in fact we with regard to the workforce we had reached out to some students from utep and now they are interns here at the bank that have been hired to help us process the forgiveness portion of the ppp loans and or if there is going to be a second round of ppp loans of course westar is going to be there for the community with that we we have some entrance from utep and in fact one of the interns was recently hired to a full-time position as one of our credit analysts so opportunities have opened up and in the community so for the for the workforce very good very great thank you yeah like like westar and teachers we actually have reallocated staff so from a business standpoint we've had individuals from retail help there the call center our virtual systems as well as with the the influx of of mortgage refunds we've had people work in that area so there's been a lot of of uh retraining or training some additional skills to staff so they can work in other areas i think that's that's been important to give us the flexibility to to assist our members i think from a standpoint of of supporting staff uh like westar and and tfcu we told staff up front that no one was going to be furloughed we're going to continue to to allow them to work in other functions if they couldn't one gave them an option to work from home those that could work from home those that couldn't we allowed them to to readjust in the offices to to cover different areas we actually before the cares act came out we set aside time for staff if they needed to without charging their pto or giving them extra pto to handle daycare issues or or illness issues we've also tried to to communicate a lot we we were having weekly meetings of our bcp team and then moved to bi-weekly and after each meeting we communicate information out to staff we let them know resources so on a regular basis we identify resources in the community and communicate that out to staff i will tell you one of the things that that surprised me and i guess it shouldn't have uh is is i requested feedback from staff on what were their biggest concerns one was just the fear of of of the of covid that the other one was that was very high that i guess surprised me was that we have a lot of see we have a lot of mothers uh working at the caribbean and so now their child is is home trying to do you know their learnings from home and online and then the mother's trying to actually be a full-time uh worker as well as trying to to teach their children and so trying to assist them and allowing them more flexibility as well as going back and and once again finding resources in the community and letting them know what those resources are then reminding them we have like an eap program and other resources that they need if they if they're really struggling and need some professional help and so reaching out there is is has been very beneficial i think the other thing and we probably haven't talked about yet is um you know we've really tried to move up our advocacy on on some of these areas for example the ppp loans as well as the forgiveness of the ppp loans you know that what's being talked about in congress is 150 000 or less we are truly advocating for that because really when you when you look at the loans that we do you know max said his average was was almost 15 000. i think we only have two or three loans over 150 000 and so many of these businesses will have a challenge trying to complete all the paperwork needed so advocacy has been an important part of what many financial institutions are doing to try to try to assist their members and their clients absolutely with that one page easy form that's going to make a huge difference very good very good yeah i was just going to say i i know i was on calls uh this week and last week and the week before with senator cruz's office senator cornyn's office uh and we've tried to get audience uh with with others that we we can just have that dialogue so i'm glad carl brought that up i wouldn't have really thought about that but we we are constantly trying to uh advocate on behalf of our consumers here in the el paso area on things that we know that they find really important it's probably something most of our members and customers don't know that we do uh for them but we're we try to act as a single voice on important issues that impact their their lives every day thank you all so much for uh for the time that you spent with us i don't see that we have any more questions from the audience i think we covered a lot of a lot of various topics and just uh just a less than an hour so thank you all for your insight was really interesting and i'm really glad to see that a lot of the you know even though we're in different industries i'm in the social services industry uh from a banking industry a lot of the same things are you know we're dealing with some of the same challenges um and it's still really with the best interest of our community in mind and making those adjustments together and being patient with one another and and helping you know helping each other learn you know how to take that next step and so i want to thank you all for the commitment that you have to this community to your employees to your clients uh and to the business community and obviously we want to thank the chamber of commerce for hosting us allowing us to host and to have this conversation and hopefully uh this helped um the audience out there if there's any businesses that heard that you have any additional questions about uh the ppp program or any future programs or legislation uh that gets passed in the future and how you can benefit from that and how those things can help you please don't hesitate to reach out to any of the organizations on the call today or the chamber of commerce they are uh the connective tissue here and they can put you in touch with them um and then if you know if there's anything else that you all would like to share please do so but i want to thank you all for your time this morning you know i want to thank you laila for taking uh you know an hour of your time to to certainly um get get all of us together and provide a resource to the community and and certainly i i would just say anything related to business on the ppp side if anybody needs that from tfcu i want to give them this local number 926 2518 that that's anything that's a ppp business related we'd be happy to answer any questions and help them out just thank you for your time and and uh as is offered anybody who has any questions they can call our local number and and talk to any of our business service representatives and and lila once again thank you for your time in getting this set up thank you yes i want to thank you lyla for for facilitating this i think it's so important that the chamber is is reaching out to our business community uh to give him this this information and like i said weststar it was here with the initial round of ppp loans and if we need to be there for the second round we are and or you can if anybody has any questions or need any assistance our local number is 915-532-1000 all right good okay everybody thank you all for your time and have a great uh rest of the week and a great weekend stay safe everybody and we'll see thank you