The Return of Common Sense BankingNamed The Model City for its careful planning in the late 1800s, Anniston, Alabama is situated on the slope of Blue Mountain and has always been a small town. With a population of 24,000, it is a progressive community with a strong economy that still retains its small-town Southern charm and friendliness. The bank acquisition and merger trend of the 1990s never suited the city nor the local bankers caught up in the consolidation. With the regional banks’ emphasis on centralized control and decision making powers transferred to Birmingham, Memphis and Charlotte, the city lost its hometown banking flavor. And that just didn’t make sense to a small cadre of business leaders and bankers who recognized and embraced the need for a community bank that understood and valued the needs of Anniston.

The enthusiasm for an independent bank was shared by many as the organizers raised in excess of $31 million in capital and opened Southern States Bank, The Common Sense Bank, in August 2007. CEO Steve Whatley explains: “We saw a need in the market for individualized service focused on small businesses and their owners. That’s the backbone of most communities and certainly is true of Anniston”

“Nearly all of management team had been with the big banks and we saw firsthand that they just don’t have the flair for serving the needs of communities like Anniston. I’m very optimistic about our future, because I think there is a strong demand, maybe as strong as there has ever been, for independent banks that are locally owned by the communities that they are in and have input and representation from local boards that actually have authority,”

“We are committed to living up to our tag line, The Common Sense Bank. We make common sense decisions; we believe the most important thing is our relationships with our customers. Our switchboard is answered by humans with a sincere greeting; our offices are staffed with seasoned bankers our community knows and trusts. We know the people and their track records mean something.”

“We are a true community bank that understands the importance and value of providing our customers with the products and services that best meet their banking needs. We stick to the basics of gathering deposits and lending locally. We are committed to doing business with people who do business

with us which is what hometown banking is all about. Isn’t that common sense banking?”

Chief Financial Officer Mitch Staples shares his own down home

view of community banking in Anniston, “it’s an important sense of comfort to our customers to be able to drive past the bank at 7 AM and see employee vehicles in the parking lot. They know that their bankers are hard at work building the community. It also means a lot to run into us at community events like chamber of commerce meetings and charity fund raisers; we share their values and interests.”

For the Southern States bankers, the value of personal relationships doesn’t end with their

customers. They also like to do business with vendors who they know and trust. They have done business with David Brasfield, CEO of TriNovus, for over 20 years. Steve explains, “David has an uncanny knack for creating common sense technology based products that fill a real business need and are easy to incorporate into the way we do business. We’re always interested in learning about the latest innovation he’s cooked up.”

The newest TriNovus technology product is BankerVMS, a vendor management solution designed to help banks manage vendors through the lifecycle of the relationship. It enables Southern States Bank to reduce costs, meet compliance guidelines, improve contract terms and increase the value yielded from each vendor.

As CFO, Mitch Staples is already sees the common sense value of BankerVMS. “It provides all kinds of benefits to us. First of all, it organizes all of the disparate types of vendor relationships logically. I’d guess that we have 3 or 4 new relationships every month which makes it easy for some of them to fall through the cracks. While it ensures that every vendor is accounted for, it recognizes that the importance of each vendor varies greatly. It provides us 5 different risk ratings (strategic, reputation, compliance, transaction and credit) so we can prioritize the importance of monitoring each vendor closely.”

“I know anyone who’s had a core bank software contract automatically renew six

months prior to the contract expiration date can appreciate the value of an automated vendor management tool. It’s very frustrating to know that you can’t make the change you need to make because of a clerical detail that was not addressed years ago. BankerVMS captures that information as the contract is entered and doesn’t forget it.”

“Disaster recovery is a reality of living in Gulf Coast state. So many things can and do wrong when a hurricane or a bad storm hits,

you don’t know whose help you’re going to need until you’re hunkered down at home, away from the bank. And once you know which vendors you need help from, be it broken window repair, tree removal, or plumbing, the paper records may

not be accessible. With BankerVMS, any of our key managers can access the needed information from the safety of their own homes regardless of the crisis facing us.”

Mitch concludes “these are just a few of the benefits. There are many additional features that will help us negotiate our larger contracts. For instance, the vendor system gives us the ability to compare our detail vendor costs to those of our peers, so we know where to search for cost saving opportunities. Best of all, it frees our management team to spend more time on serving our customers.” That makes BankerVMS a common sense product for The Common Sense Bank.

Common sense banking seems to be paying off. In less than two years, during the most troubled economic times in nearly 80 years, the bank has grown to three offices with over $145 million in assets.

For more information on BankerVMS or to schedule a demo online or in person, contact the TriNovus sales team at 205.991.5636