As the only truly local bank in the Skagit Valley, SaviBank has been expanding rapidly. Meyer Sign & Advertising sat down with SaviBank CEO Mike Cann and bank president Andy Hunter to find out what’s going on…and what’s with the whole owl thing.

If you live in or travel around the Skagit Valley, you can’t help but notice the proliferation of banks with a whimsical owl logo — and thanks to Meyer Sign & Advertising, some cool LED displays as well. It’s not your imagination; SaviBank has been expanding its footprint throughout our local communities. Having recently grown from five branches to eight, including its most recent location in Concrete, SaviBank today enjoys the distinction of being the only true local bank headquartered in the Skagit Valley.

SaviBank’s origins go back to April 2005 with the founding of Business Bank, which was established through the investment of nearly 300 shareholders who believed in the importance of a locally owned community bank that would serve the financial needs of local businesses and professionals.

Nine years later, the bank re-invented itself with an augmented vision of its identity and mission. To better understand the significance of that transformation, and how it has driven the bank’s recent expansion, Meyer Sign & Advertising sat down with SaviBank CEO and chairman of the board, Mike Cann, and president Andy Hunter to talk about what it means to be a “local bank” in an industry dominated by big bank franchises. The answers to the five questions we posed are a compilation of responses from both Mike and Andy.

What have you seen as the biggest changes in the banking business during the course of your careers?

The biggest changes have been on the regulatory side. Back in 1971, there was a dramatic change in the way that loans were quoted, and regulations have just exploded since then. Our promissory notes used to be on a 3”x8” single document describing how much you were borrowing, the length of time of the loan, and the number of payments you would make. Today, if you refinance your home you can anticipate a 50-page document. That’s not to say that some of these regulations haven’t been good, but on the whole the benefits for consumers have been a mixed bag. In some cases, the regulatory environment has confused consumers more than helping them and made it more difficult for them to obtain loans. And frankly, it costs us and consumers more as a result. We are a relatively small bank, with $300 million in assets, and we have three (soon to be four) full-time people who do nothing but follow these regulations. That cost has to go somewhere. The regulatory changes following the recent recession have actually hurt consumers more than helped them. For example, we no longer do long-term fixed rate mortgages. A lot of community banks got out of doing any sort of home loans to consumers because of the compliance issues involved. What this has meant is that consumers have lost choices — and when consumers have fewer choices, it generally means they are going to be paying more. Ironically, the regulations protecting them were already in place, they just needed to be followed.

How have changes in the banking industry been reflected in your business model as a local bank?

There have been many changes in banking over the years and sometimes the most difficult thing for consumers and businesses is navigating all those changes. As a local community bank we strive to be relationship oriented — to be able to sit down and talk to people and walk them through the process on both the consumer and business side to better understand what needs to be done. With larger banks it’s more of a boilerplate approach: sign this, do that, with little explanation. We walk people through these processes to better understand their goals. For example, we had a loan situation the other day where the customer came in and wanted to do a spec loan, but they had never done speculation building. They thought they could go ahead and do this, then live in the house and sell it. But in our experience there are so many issues in that process, and most people don’t understand what they need to go through and what the true value is when they are done. We try to help them understand what they’re getting into and how to best reach their goals.

No can fail to notice that there are a lot more SaviBanks then there were a year ago. What’s been driving this expansion?

To begin with, we believe strongly in the community bank model — which means being closer to your community and making your decisions locally. Skagit Bank had been present since around 1956 and had played the role of a local community bank — and they did a lot of really good things in the community. We were the only other community bank headquartered in Skagit Valley, so when Skagit Bank sold to Banner Bank we were the only local community bank left. We felt this created an opportunity to expand our outreach. Expanding through branch locations and doing more signage have been the driving factors in this experience. We’ve almost doubled our size in the last 12 months. Now the issue is how to stabilize and run the branches efficiently. There is a cost to that kind of growth, but we think it is worth it. Growth has to be measured and strategic, and we’ve given a lot of thought as to how best to do it. These are all plans we had in mind over the next several years, but the sale of Skagit Bank accelerated our timeframe.

What does being a “local bank” mean to you, and why does it matter to your customers?

There are a lot of definitions for community bank. According to the FDIC, it is a bank with assets of $10 billion or less, but that is still a really big bank. For us, it comes down to geographic location. If your board, management and staff who make the decisions for the bank live, play, and work in the community, that is our definition of a community bank. If Skagit County has an economic problem, that may not be a big deal to a national bank, but for us it’s huge. We live and die with the community we serve, so it is very important for us to be involved in the community. If the community is successful, we know that we will be as well. If you as a business or individual are headquartered in New York, L.A., or even Seattle, you won’t have that local connection with the top people in a banking organization that we can offer. With SaviBank, you have access to the decision makers. If you have an issue with us, you can walk across the lobby and talk with the CEO or President.

What’s with the owl? What does it say about your brand?

This bank was originally named Business Bank, and the concept was that it was going to deal only with businesses. Turns out that’s a great model in Seattle or downtown L.A., but in a more rural community like ours you have to have greater breadth, so we expanded our model to include personal banking. As we got to moving the bank forward we realized we needed to change its name as well. We looked at a number of names, but we liked SaviBank because that’s what we help our customers become: savvy. So that is where it all started. When we got to thinking about a logo that represents wisdom, we thought about the image of an owl. At the time, we really didn’t appreciate just how popular the owl image was. Our byline is, “the wise choice” — how can we help you make wise choices about your finances? We are here to help people reach their goals and lead better financial lives. We did a lot of research in coming up with our name, but the owl was really a gut call. It just seemed to make sense to people, and you can’t go into any of our branches without running across owls — pictures, photos, stuffed animals. We had no clue it was as popular an image as it is, but we love it.