Ulster Savings Bank recently celebrated its 170th year in business. To learn more about this financial services fixture of the Hudson Valley, Business Journal Senior Enterprise Editor Phil Hall spoke with Bill Calderara, president and CEO of the Kingston-based bank.
For the benefit of those who are not familiar with your institution, can you provide a brief overview?
“Ulster Savings Bank was founded in 1851, so we’re 170 years old this year. We’re one of the oldest institutions within the state and the oldest in Ulster County. We have 14 full-service branches and two loan production offices. We’re in Ulster, Dutchess and Orange counties and we have a loan production office in Westchester.
“We started as a bank, but we’re a full financial services company. In addition to all the banking services, both personal and business, we have a full-service insurance company for both personal and commercial lines, we have a wealth management group, we have a payroll company, we also have tax preparation and some bookkeeping services for businesses and personal tax returns, and we have a title company — so we’re kind of a one-stop shop for all of the financial needs that you might need.
“We’re a mutual community bank, which means we have no shareholders. And we treat the community as the shareholder in the form of the dividend that we give back to it. We formed a foundation in 1991 and we’ve given well over $13 million to about 249 different nonprofits within the communities that we serve.
“We also have a goal that 100% of our employees volunteer their time in the community as well. And we don’t care —whatever their passion is. Some will help out at a local food pantry or teach or coach kids’ sports. We can give back up to 10,000 man hours a year.”
Not many companies can claim they’ve been around for 170 years. What is the secret to your longevity? And have you ever been the target for a possible acquisition?
“It really goes back to what’s in our DNA and sticking to our original mission and values. A mutual is formed for the benefit of the customer, so the individuals that got together in 1851 they felt they needed a bank within their community to serve their community and not for their own gain. They put their own capital up with no expectation of ever getting that capital back or return on that capital — it’s the ultimate form of philanthropy, giving to the future.
“And a mutual, you cannot just outright acquire a mutual because there’s no shares to acquire — you would have to convert to a stock bank first and that would require a vote of our customers. We can take a long-term approach where we don’t have to worry about a quarterly report to shareholders while focusing on what we think are the right strategies that we need to do for our customers.”
What is your asset size?
“We’re just shy of $1.3 billion in assets and a lot of that growth has come in the last few years. Because we’ve given back to the community, they’ve come back to us often in the form of additional business because they see it being poured back into the local communities.”
How did the bank respond to the Covid pandemic?
“Being a 170-year-old institution, this was not our first pandemic. We’ve been through pandemics, we’ve been through depressions, we’ve been through recessions — and we actually had a pandemic plan that we triggered in January 2020, ahead of the curve of most other institutions and, in some cases, ahead of government.
“We ordered all of the equipment that we knew would be needed for cleaning our offices. When the shutdown happened and everybody was scrambling for what they would do, we were able to put 65% of our employees working from home in a four-day period. And that was because we had all the equipment ready to go — we had ordered the laptops earlier.
“We did not to miss a beat through the pandemic — we were able to provide services because we never closed. We had drive-thru and then in-branch by appointment to help limit the number of people at any one point in time.
“When the governor issued some of the shutdown orders for the state. I went down to our CFO’s office and had him cut me $50,000 worth of checks. We walked around and started to hand them out to some of the local food pantries and the United Way because we knew their services would be needed instantly. And last year, we increased our giving significantly within communities and did things like waive ATM fees for noncustomers who might not be able to get to their financial institutions — we don’t charge those fees to our customers.
“We also caused a change in regulation, because on savings accounts and things like that there was a Regulation DD that said more than six transactions in any given month for a savings account had to be done in person. We called up our regulators and said, ‘That’s ridiculous during a pandemic to make somebody come in to do a transaction they can do remotely … we’re going to temporarily waive that.’ They agreed with it, and not long after that they waived the regulation permanently.
“We received an award from the Independent Community Bankers of America for our community efforts during Covid.”
How is your banking competing against the fintechs that have redirected banking from the brick-and-mortar setting to the digital realm?
“We’re able to incorporate the best of both worlds. We have the technology — if you can go on our website and apply for a mortgage completely electronically, but you can also talk to a live person. We can work with the customer and potentially have way more products to offer.
“We also compete on the service level — there’s a difference between having somebody that’s working with the customer and thinks about them first, versus what the guidelines say.”
What does the bank have on its agenda for the second half of this year?
“Because it is our 170th anniversary, we decided to do something called 170 acts of kindness. For example, if one of our customers is a barber shop or a hair salon, we said that for their next 100 customers that come in we’d pick up the cost. We worked with one of our waste management companies who knew that people were starting to cancel some of the services because they were having a financial hardship, and we picked up the tab for their trash collection and pickup.
“We have our employees carry around little cards and hand them to someone that explains 170 acts of kindness. Some of them have $25 or more for gift cards, so they can hand that to someone if they are in the supermarket (and see someone) who was putting something back because it’s too expensive.
“We are also continuing on some green initiatives within the bank. We have a couple of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles and we have a solar project planned for later this year at our headquarters. We have EV charging stations at a few of our branches.
“Education is a big part of what we do for both our consumers and our business, and we do a large amount of financial literacy. We’ve been sponsoring that in local schools where we’ve paid for all of the programming, the teacher training, the curriculum guidelines. And we’ll also make staff available to go teach both in schools and in a lot of community centers locally.”
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June 28, 2021 at 04:16PM
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Suite Talk: Bill Calderara, president and CEO, Ulster Savings Bank - Westfair Online
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