Hoosier Banker 7 NOTABLE QUOTES Bank Community Service on Twitter First Financial Bank • @BankAtFirst • Oct. 3 Cheers to all the runners & walkers who participated in the 13th Annual @SophiesAngelRun in Bridgetown! We’re proud to be a sponsor to help raise awareness for pediatric brain tumor research & keep Sophie’s memory alive through scholarships. #bankatfirst #givefirst 1st Source Bank • @1stSourceBank • Sept. 22 A big thank you to our client, Mary, for allowing us to be part of her visit to her hometown Thikah, Kenya and the school children there! She asked if we’d provide a small item she could gift to the 1,000 students. Sometimes all it takes is a pencil to make someone smile. Crossroads Bank • @CrossroadsBank • Sept. 13 Carly Doerr of our #NorthManchester Branch recently presented a check to #AnimalWelfareLeague. The bank made this donation on her behalf for winning the @CrossroadsBank #EmployeePetContest with Ellie Mae. First Savings Bank • @fsbindiana • Sept. 5 Proudly supporting our communities! First Savings Bank’s Charlestown Office is collecting non-perishable items on behalf of the North Clark Outreach Center. Items may be dropped off through the end of September. Hoosier Heartland State Bank • @myHHSB • Aug. 26 Thank you to our generous community for supporting our annual food drive! We collected the most donations to date! #fooddrive #hhsbgivesback #communitybank Follow IBA Twitter @indianabankers Twitter Andrew J. Briggs Chairman Indiana Bankers Association First Senior Vice President for Business Development Farmers & Merchants State Bank, Archbold, Ohio CHAIRMAN’S REPORT A highlight each year at the Indiana Bankers Association is the Annual Convention, which you can read about in this issue. As always, we had a terrific event, with outstanding presentations, great food and entertainment, and lots of networking opportunity. At Convention, the Future Leadership Division was very successful in raising funds for BANKPAC, with more than $25,000 coming from the auction alone. And if you were there, you may remember an unusual item on the live auction agenda. For the auction, our incoming chairman, Lucas White of The Fountain Trust Company, offered a shoe-shopping experience to the highest bidder. It wasn’t just any kind of shoe shopping – it was shopping for high-end Allen Edmonds shoes. This make of shoe has been the topic of conversation for some time with the IBA government relations team and other banking advocates. Apparently Allen Edmonds shoes are pricey, but stylish and comfortable. What better way to raise funds and have some fun than for Lucas to personally pledge to buy a pair of Allen Edmonds for the highest bidder? It became even more fun when the winning bidder turned out to be the brother of Lucas, Campbell White. I hear the brothers have already gone on their shoe shopping trip, with some IBA staff tagging along to watch. Lucas clearly is a man of his word. That was all good fun, but serious, too, because in the end more funds were raised to support the PAC that supports Indiana banking. Those shoes, too, are a little bit of a metaphor. We community bankers like to say that we wear many hats, but since hats aren’t as popular as they once were, maybe we should say we wear many different kinds of shoes. When you as a banker are making a presentation to your board, you wear a formal kind of shoe – maybe even Allen Edmonds. Then when you’re visiting with clients, you might wear steel-toed safety shoes, if touring a plant; or mud-proof hiking boots, if visiting a farm; or sneakers, if helping at an elementary school event. Bankers also walk a fine line day in and day out, constantly balancing between being too tight in lending standards versus too loose. There are many fine lines for bankers, among the various constituents including shareholders, customers, staff and members of the community. At the same time, we need to point our toes in the right direction in order to walk boldly into the future. We know that whatever it is that we’ve done for years to be successful may not work in upcoming years or weeks or days. We need to choose our steps carefully to walk into a successful tomorrow. Sometimes the pace of banking is so fast that we need running shoes, not walking shoes, just to keep up. In my case as IBA chairman, I feel like I’m running a relay race, soon to pass on the leadership baton to Lucas. Later he’ll pass it on to his successor, and on and on. I look forward to seeing how Lucas fulfills his role as 2020 chairman. He and I represent different career stages, but we share a legacy, in that we both come from banking families. Lucas is a fourth-generation banker and attorney, and I’m a fifth-generation banker. You don’t have to be born into a banking family, though, to hold utmost respect for this industry. I’ve met many fine banking professionals throughout my career, and I consider the Indiana banking community to be my other family, with a strong tradition going back too many generations to count. As year 2019 winds to an end, I’d like to thank each of you for allowing me to serve as your chairman. I’ll always consider it one of the highest honors of my career, and it’s been a privilege to work with you. HB
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