Business View Magazine | June 2022

117 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 6 CAYUGA LAKE NAT IONAL BANK loan had been forgiven. “It was almost two years of originating and inputting forgiveness applications, reviewing, talking with customers, cultivating relationships,” Babcock says. “There are a lot of businesses that I feel without it would have closed, and if they didn’t close, they certainly wouldn’t have been able to pay their employees. We’re in a really rural area and a lot of their employees are our customers. We were able to provide these folks with some certainty during a time of complete uncertainty. It was absolutely rewarding and really kind of accentuates that community bank feeling that we are big on.” Cayuga Lake National Bank has been community-focused since its inception back in 1864. Established by Henry Wells and Edwin B. Morgan, the founders of Wells Fargo, American Express, and Wells College, the bank has remained a small, community-focused bank, but has grown to include three branches. The main branch is in Union Springs, along with one in Aurora, NY and the recently-opened Lansing, NY branch. Lansing was opened during the height of the pandemic, when most places were shutting down operations, rather than opening new ones. “The bank’s been in a unique position where we have a young management team that faced