Business View Magazine | November 2020

146 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2020 Since the beginning of 2020, our employees have personally donated $4,215. The food drives have also been a wonderful help to our local food banks that struggled during the pandemic.” Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, Register reports that all 11 TFB branches are now fully open, and have been since July 1st. “In March, we closed the lobbies and then we followed the phased approach that other states have done,” he relates. “We built a COVID-19 reopening matrix, which established the protocols in how we interact with each other and with our customers. We met the CDC guidelines and the more local directives of the Governor of Virginia. We had mitigated the risk by strict adherence to those requirements and we found that our customers are very grateful that we’re open, and we think that we’ve picked up additional business because of that. All our associates – back office and frontline – wear facial coverings. We require all customers who come in to wear facial coverings. If they choose not to do so, we give them alternative means to do business with us – either online or we’ll go out to their car in the parking lot. So, we give them alternatives. We’ve been very fortunate that we haven’t had much of an outbreak in our branches. We’ve only had to close one branch for cleaning, one time, so far.” On October 1, Fauquier Bank announced that it was going to merge with the Virginia National Bank, thereby creating a premier Virginia financial institution with greater scale, operating leverage, and complementary business lines. Virginia National Bank was founded in 1998 and has several offices in the Charlottesville area, one office in Winchester, and is currently set to open an office in Richmond. After the merger,