Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 9

139 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 9 our customers. We try to be flexible to their needs and make decisions quickly. To listen to our clients and empower our teammates to make informed decisions. We even have a fund called PFB Cares, which may sound cliché, but our employees look out for each other and give to that fund to help in times of need. We have a do-the-right-thing approach, and we believe that’s going to continue leading to growth and prosperity. Accountability drives us to hold each other to a higher standard. Even if we can’t do something here at our bank, we try to refer clients to someone who can meet their needs. We promote a culture that is always open to change and not reserved. We’re always looking to adapt and move to the next challenge.” While Planters First Bank has proud roots in the agriculture sector in Georgia, they’ve also identified growth opportunities closer to metropolitan markets over the last few years and have continued working towards being able to service them. They’ve grown not just in terms of locations, but in terms of the breadth and range of services offered thanks to key digital infrastructure upgrades. “It was a huge undertaking to revamp all of our services in 2019, and we went with a lot of great new partners,” says Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Rusty Slade. “We took that year to really harness what was going on in our markets. We felt like there were some opportunities that we were missing out on, so we threw out the old and brought in the new, and we’ve been reaping the benefits ever since. We were a year into all this new technology when the pandemic hit, and we poured a lot of our resources into it. But it really allowed us to take advantage of working remotely, so we were able to spread our employees out into other markets, and it’s paid big dividends.” “The team has done a tremendous job of recognizing our needs and making changes to invest in the bank’s future,” says Executive PLANTERS F I RST BANK Vice President & Chief Deposit & Marketing Officer, Dan Duchnowski. “We made the switch to some of our new partners and implemented technology that’s very progressive for a community bank in Georgia. We were the first to offer video banking through our partner, POPi/o, and we recently implemented BaZing through Strategy Corp. This new partnership not only offers many great benefits to our customers such as roadside assistance and cell phone protection but it provides the bank with the opportunity to increase non-interest income. We also got lucky and had made plans for a call center because it felt like some of our branches were overwhelmed with calls, and we wanted to allow them to focus on foot traffic so that we could give our customers the attention they needed. We’d already anticipated moving into that call center when the pandemic hit, which turned out to be very beneficial.” As a small business community bank, another major component of Planters’ business strategy