(Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) – Middle-market banks on the First Coast are in a better situation than originally expected heading into 2021, and so are some of their clients, according to Charles Kauffman, leader of Wells Fargo’s commercial banking in North Florida.
Wells Fargo is the third-largest bank by deposits in the area, with 6.57 billion in deposits and 46 offices on the First Coast.
What are some trends you’ve seen in the last year and moving forward?
You know, when we started off into this pandemic, I think companies were very optimistic. They had good strong workforces. And then, bam, you have the pandemic, which truly put a big scare in everybody. So if you were to talk to me in May and say, ‘What is it going to be like, in December, if we had continued to shut down?’ I would say to one, every one of the CEOs we do business with would probably have been panicking, right? But they really, they really have managed that remarkably well, especially in North Florida.
What does a successful business look like in this climate?
I would say that their ability to adapt to a really rapidly changing environment was what stuck out the most. The companies that we were most concerned with really employed some creative techniques to either change what they were doing on a day-to-day basis, or alter it in some way.
I would say, just the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
What are some examples of companies that have adapted well?
It’s any business that was in distribution, or in the retail of groceries, food products, obviously, moving from restaurant sales to eating at home, those businesses really had to hire a lot of people. And they’ve done remarkably well.
So if we look at acquiring more capital in an already challenging time, how are these minority-led businesses doing? How does Wells Fargo advise these struggling companies?
Wells Fargo really has put a tremendous emphasis in a matter of a number of resources on minority owned businesses.
With the PPP program, Wells Fargo generated about $400 million in fees. What we are doing is redeploying those fees back into the community, through what we call our Open For Business Fund [which supports nonprofits that help small businesses, like Community Development Financial Institutions and more]. Essentially, what that does is that give more availability of capital resources to small businesses that are minority owned.
Photo courtesy of Business Insider