Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

173 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 T IOGA STATE BANK community banking curve when it comes to technology, Tioga State Bank used the pandemic situation to offer even more online banking services to its customers. “We adapted to online banking pretty early, we’ve had it since 1997, so we had a lot of offerings, and we also adjusted fairly quickly following COVID,” Fisher says. “One thing we didn’t have was the ability for customers sign documents remotely. So we adopted DocuSign early in the process to help with PPP.” Another thing they implemented was video banking for the bank’s customers. Fisher notes, “Customers could chat with us, and not just over text. They could actually see the person and talk with a person and I think that was fairly unique. I don’t think a lot of community banks are offering that service even today.” Tioga State Bank’s offerings and ability to process PPP loans quickly and effectively brought in a whole slew of new customers. Up to 45 percent of the bank’s PPP loans were actually done for non-customers or new customers who were unable to access loans through bigger regional banks or credit unions. “We were able to help out a lot of businesses that were unable to get it from their current financial services provider, and fortunately, we’ve been able to convert a lot of those relationships to become business partners of ours,” Fisher says. The bank processed almost 950 loans during the pandemic, averaging around $69,000 per loan, with its largest loan amounting to $2.7 million. “We were doing whatever we could to help small businesses that needed the money to keep their businesses going – and it felt really good,” Fisher admits. “Never have I seen our team come together and work like that. People were working on evenings, nights, and weekends because it was truly a mission to help our community and customers get through this. SB employees celebrate Blue Jeans Friday for charity in their TSB apparel