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Banking


Jim Cherry of Park Sterling Bank makes a point during the community bank discussion.


Opportunities and drawbacks


V


irginia Business talked with six community bank ex- ecutives in April about the challenges and opportuni-


ties they face. T e group included G. Robert Aston Jr., chairman and CEO of Portsmouth-based TowneBank; G. William Beale, president and CEO of Richmond-based Union Bankshares; James C. Cherry, Richmond-based CEO of Charlotte, N.C.-based Park Sterling Bank; William J. Ridenour, president and chief administrative offi cer of Reston- based John Marshall Bank; Gary R. Shook, president and CEO of Middle- burg-based Middleburg Bank; and Susan K. Still, president and CEO of Roanoke- based HomeTown Bank. T e following


26 AUGUST 2016


Community bank leaders assess the industry landscape is an edited transcript.


Virginia Business:What is the val- ue proposition for community banks? How are they diff erent from regional and large banks?


Ridenour: T e biggest thing I notice is that, when banks get very large, they’ve got so many employees, that in order to control risk, particularly with lending products, they pull a lot of the authority into a central area, which they have to do. From our standpoint, when you have people that are in the trenches that are meeting with the customers and they can make decisions, they can respond quickly, they can customize things that you don’t


see in the larger banks. I think that’s the biggest thing that we see.


Beale: I’d add [that community banks] would rotate offi cers on the relationships. T e person that a client had 10 years ago is probably the same person today and likely the one they’ll have fi ve years from now … I think the other piece is, after this downturn, there are many of our clients who saw the big banks exit lines of business while we stood in there and continued to fi nance homebuilders. We continued to fi nance others that were out of favor …


Still: I really felt like the downturn caused a renaissance for community


Photos by Jay Paul


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