Page 11 - December 31 2017 Reporter

2018 League Chairman Travis Schroll

Democratic Republic of Congo. Those nations are often French speaking, and their culture has
a specific hierarchical structure that dictates how they bank. Their leaders have group meetings
and wherever the community leader banks, the others typically follow suit. As you can imagine,
for a group of immigrants moving to a new country, word-of-mouth travels fast and is embraced.
Finding a solution to capture the business of a growing new population in a community required
a few adjustments at Beardstown Savings as well.
ADAPTING TO A CHANGING COMMUNITY

The Hispanic population comprises a significant percentage of
their clientele. Securing new business when a language
barrier poses an obvious challenge, means the first step
becomes gaining trust. “The Hispanic population has really
helped our business.” Travis says. Beardstown Savings is
primarily a portfolio lender so while many banks sell off their
underlying assets to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, most of Beardstown’s loans remain on their
balance sheet, thus allowing more flexibility regarding loan guidelines. “We can stray from
restrictive guidelines (restrictive as it applies to our community) and look at other forms of our
borrower’s credit history like utility bills or rental history. These are all good indicators,” says
Schroll. He continues by adding that this flexibility has provided lending opportunities to a
previously underserved segment of people and has built trust within the community he goes on
to clarify.

Q: Seems reasonable and smart to me and I asked if this is how most community
bankers operate?
Travis believed that to be the case with most tradition thrifts, adding that if you “look at the
League’s member banks you’ll see, while we may be serving the original community
geographically, the demographic of the population has changed – especially in Chicago.” He
went on to exclaim that “it’s kind of exciting to learn about different cultures, their struggle getting
to the U.S. and how they became citizens.”

There are two bilingual employees out of a total of fourteen at Beardstown Savings and that ratio
Travis says serves them well. Having those employees is a huge asset and “it allows people to
advance in their careers, especially in rural areas,” he says. “When I first started, there were times
a customer’s kid would be the translator during the loan process. The only option was to use their
children before we had bilingual employees. Early on we’d have to hire someone to come in and
translate. It was a whole new way of doing business. What we found was how important it was to
develop a level of trust due to the language barrier. Not that anything was being said in an
untrustworthy manner, but when you’re talking about numbers and the way a loan is structured
and getting that information translated accurately really meant a lot of trust had to be felt from
both sides. As a bank, are we getting the information across as it should be relayed, and does
the child understand the complexity of that transaction or what their parents are signing? It was
a hurdle to overcome but we’ve done it. Beardstown is now serving second and third generation
families.” For many of their clients English has become the primary means to communicate. Even
if their bilingual staff is out of the office during an appointment, they have built up such a high
level of trust that having that bilingual staff on hand is not always necessary; yet their presence
and skillset is always a plus.

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December 2017 IllInoIs RepoRteR