Nebraska Independent Community Bankers

5 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 that have that type of legislation in the pipeline. “I would characterize the big concern for our bankers to be uncertainty and the fear of industry risk. The public sometimes has a difficult time ascertaining the difference between anything with the word ‘bank’ on it. The worry for our industry is that if the State Commissioner approves a digital asset depository institution that, for whatever reason, goes south, what type of institutional risk does that pose to the traditional banking industry here in Nebraska? We are truly in uncharted waters when it comes to digital assets. It’s so new and it changes so rapidly.” BVM: How have Nebraska’s community banks fared during the pandemic? Morrow: “We’re at the tail end of the pandemic from a PPP perspective, and our community banks in Nebraska did a phenomenal job in getting that money out to businesses that needed it. And it was a real, roll-up-your-sleeves kind of effort. It was all new and was based on customer relationships. We have a great group here and NICB did a great job to support those efforts.” Hallman: “In Nebraska there were just over 80,000 PPP loans made and the overwhelming percentage were made by our community banks. The sum total of those PPP loans exceeded $4.5 billion in our state, alone. The average loan size was just a shade over $58,000. So the percentage of jobs in the state that were positively impacted by the PPP process and the work that our community banks did was enormous. It shone a light on the value of the community banks because, as Brian said, what we do is relationship banking. And that business model is entirely different to the way that the top-tier ‘too-big-to-fail’, systemically important financial institutions operate. “Over 80 percent of our members are rural and banks that serve small businesses and that’s the backbone of the economy. In terms of advocacy, some issues can be really important today but then tomorrow something else crops up that we have to put our attention on.” BVM: What legislation is currently of high interest? Hallman: “In the last two legislative sessions, we’ve had a bit more ‘meat on the bone’ from a bill standpoint. And a reason to really fight for our industry in the State. We had a digital asset depository institution bill that was presented early in 2021 and that was very different from what we had seen from a traditional banking standpoint over the years. Effective Oct. 1, Nebraska is now the second state in the Union (after Wyoming) to approve legislation enabling the state banking commissioner to accept, review, and ultimately decide whether to approve or deny applications for digital asset entities. There are now two dozen other States