Business View Magazine | October 2020

123 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 121 F INANC I AL CREDI T UNION Small Business Administration) – twice for best Small Business Financial Advocate, twice for Credit Union of the Year, and five times we received the First Mortgage Lender of the Year award.” During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the Credit Union processed approximately $29 million in paycheck protection loans as part of the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program. “It was just shy of 500 loans, saving about 4,800 jobs in the northeast Florida communities,” Marovich notes. In what is understood to be a particularly competitive marketplace, COO Paul Blackstone believes that 121’s size gives it the flexibility to be able to move both quickly and dynamically. “We spent a lot of time working on our digital platform, which we continue to evolve and improve,” he states. “One thing we’ve learned in relation to COVID is the importance of making services accessible via digital platforms. This means adding things like video teller machines, which allows us to provide the same level of high-touch service, as well as, a high level of safety for our employees and members. While we want to see our members in person, the reality is the better we can serve them and make it more seamless for them digitally, the better off they’re going to be. And what we’ve seen from that thus-far is increased membership growth as opposed to a fall-off, which we would have expected during a pandemic.” Currently, all of 121 Financial’s lobby branches are open by appointment only. Additionally, 90 percent of its back office staff were moved to working remotely within two weeks of Florida’s lockdown orders. “We typically have 90-95 people working in our corporate headquarters and we got that down to about five people within that time period,” Marovich reports. “The other thing that helped us was the video teller