Officials with two of Cordell’s banks say business has remained good despite COVID-19 and that they have taken procedures to ensure the safety of their employees and their customers during the Pandemic.
Shane Regier, vice president and commercial lender at Equity Bank in Cordell, said, “During the first couple of months we shut down the lobby and only the drive-thru was open. Since then, we’ve opened up and customers can come in but must maintain social distancing.”
With that, Regier explained that temperatures are taken of staff members and recorded. If a staff member is showing any symptoms, he or she is asked to go home and get tested.
“If the staff member tests positive, then he or she would quarantine for 10 days and so would any other staff member who has had close contact with that person would also quarantine for 10 days,” Regier added.
He said staff members from other locations would be sent to Cordell during that time to fill in.
“But the bank would stay open. The bank would be disinfected,” Regier stressed.
“Fortunately, we haven’t had to do that so far. We’ve been doing well,” he noted.
Masks for employees is optional. “But if a customer comes in wearing a mask, we ask that the staff member helping that customer put on a mask, too,” Regier related.
The bank has four fulltime employees including Regier and “we just hired a part-time teller,” he stated.
Regier thinks, “We haven’t seen that large a drop off in business. He indicated the first couple of months were slower, pointing out, “but it’s picked up to where we’re pretty back well back to normal.”
He pointed to the Small Business Administration’s forgiveness loans that he believes “helped some small businesses stay afloat. That kind of buoyed the community and got us through the dark times.”
Christ Jones is executive vice president of the Bank of Cordell.
“Business has been good, steady,” he believes.
“We shut our doors (to the lobby) a little bit before some of the others and reopened about the same time as they did,” Jones said. “We did a bunch of the Small Business Administration loans,” he added.
Among the procedures and precautions the bank has put in place are signs for social distancing, and putting sneeze and cough guards up. “We have all that up at the desks and for tellers,” Jones explained.
“We have people who go through the bank and sanitize the building several times a day,” Jones added.
He said the bank’s break room is off limits to everyone except employees. There is no mask mandate and they are optional for employees and customers.
Jones pointed out, “We’ve seen customers using technology a lot more. They can use their phones for so much and they are using the drive-thru if they’re not comfortable with coming in the bank.”
He concluded by saying, “The nuts and bolts of it is we’re doing just fine and every day is a new day. Other than that, all is well in paradise.”