Pub. 9 2020 Issue 2

9 s u mm e r | 2020 F E A T U R E Several statements from call participants are shared below: • When the bank closed the lobbies, the drive-thru lanes experienced long wait times. The bank bought gift cards from their current small business customers and handed them out to customers to say “thank you” for understanding. Since some people were working remotely and some people were at the bank, sched- ules changed, making it hard to determine where spe- cific people were on any given day. The bank created a shared calendar that could be used to route calls. For banks operating in different states, trying to ac- count for the discrepancies between the various state agencies and government offices was a challenge. When picking up lunch or supplies, the intent was to think “local.” The person picking up lunch/supplies would take a picture of the business, and then this would be posted to the bank’s social media site. This was a “plug” for local customers. • Identified three CDC approved disinfection firms and had them ready to come on-site if an employee ex- hibited symptoms. As soon as the pandemic started, one person created a DR folder on the server, call- ing it 2020 COVID-19. Documentation was saved in the folder, one of the first things being an email sent to employees in mid-February, citing the CDC. The folder is shared with the Crisis Management Team so that anyone can save documents. There are subfolders (CDC, WHO, HR, Regulations, Vendor Responses). There is also a miscellaneous folder. This information will be used to create a Lessons Learned document. Moving to a virtual environment VMware and Hyper-V made accessing the network remotely much easier. One bank relied heavily on video communica- tion for bank-wide meetings. Before each meeting, they would allow 10-15 minutes for employees to chat and get caught up with each other. This helped employee morale. Instructed employees to turn off Alexa and Siri so anyone listening would not be able to hear private conversations. Will you ask custom- ers to lower their masks in order to get a good shot of their face, or so you can recognize them? For front line people, it will be scary having people coming into the branch with masks on. Can you require people to put them on or take them off? Is it legal to take everyone’s temperature? Methods to conduct commit- tee and Board meetings remotely became a challenge. Is printing allowed? How do you handle the secure transfer of information and disposal of that informa- tion and documentation? Some areas (loan docs, trust docs, etc.) still require “wet signatures” for certain documents. This completely disrupted the “Safer at Home” and “Social Distancing” planning. Banks will have different areas/departments/industries push for complete electronic signatures. Will review the back- log of unused vacation time at the end of the year. (Change policy so that it can be carried over or sell time back to the bank.) Hurricane season is coming, so we will need to start planning for this. How do you maintain social distance while trying to recover from a hurricane? With this list, the hope is that there is an idea you can use or an area that you failed to document that will help make your Business Continuity Plan more robust. At AsSys, “Solutions Are Our Business.” Through our commitment to our Virginia family of Community Bankers, we pride ourselves in being able to partner across all areas of your enterprise and to be a source of guidance in uncertain times. If you would like a complete re- port with all COVID 19 responses, please feel free to contact your Virginia account executive, Colleen Wynn (cwynn@aasysgroup.com) .