As originally published by Texas Border Business newsprint edition September 2021
By Roberto Hugo Gonzalez
September 2021- The pandemic has been devastating for all of us. It has affected everyone in one way or another, be it tragic or financial. Those who were not able to plan were terribly affected. Others never had a chance to come up with a plan. Those who did, by following their instincts, reading news and reports from reliable sources, and making decisions based on their business experience, were able to navigate COVID-19 well.
Before the pandemic, Vantage Bank went through a merger that was officially completed in November 2018. By then, Jeff Sinnott, the current President and CEO of Vantage Bank, had already joined as the Chief of Operations and Technology and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Officer. He led a complete overhaul of the bank’s operations and technology divisions, emphasizing an enhanced, omnichannel customer experience.
It is important to note that before joining Vantage Bank, Jeff was Chief Operations officer at Southwest Bank in Dallas – Fort Worth. Before that, in the software side of the business, he worked with consumer product companies like PepsiCo. “That’s where I found that love of banking and technology and putting them together,” he said.
About fourteen months ago, Jeff was named by the board of directors and its Chairman of the Board, Jim Collins to become the bank’s Chief Executive Officer and President of Vantage Bank. He has been involved in banking technology for the last 25 years. As a software engineer, he had the opportunity to work on the Model Banking Program at Bank of America. Jeff spoke to Texas Border Business in exclusivity and said Vantage Bank currently operates 23 banking centers throughout Texas. “Unlike most community banks, we are a decentralized model, so we have three primary hubs, our operation hub in McAllen, a central headquarters hub in San Antonio, and then we have our hub in north Texas. We have over 450 employees spread across all those different areas.” He continued, “We have a centralized digital workflow technology platform to bring us together. It works very well for Vantage Bank.” Their footprint also covers Laredo, El Paso, and Dallas – Fort Worth.
He pointed out that as he was growing up, technology was always his passion. “I was always developing software from a very young age.” He said, “In my family, particularly my mom’s side, they have roots in the banking industry. My mom’s father and grandfather started a bank during the great depression; Security Financial Bank still is a great community bank in Wisconsin.” Banking and technology have been part of his roots. His set of skills were paramount for the merger of Inter National Bank and Vantage Bank but even more so in January 2020 when there was glooming reports that a pandemic was coming our way from China.
Jeff said that they formed a pandemic incident response team, and the first kick-off meeting was held on January 26, 2020. “As we saw what was happening in China and the way that they were reacting, we felt like this was going to be different. The incident response team was to protect our employees and our customers, it was about their safety and sustainability. During that meeting, we ordered gloves, masks, and laptops for anybody who didn’t have a laptop at the time, so we could support remote work. As the pandemic started to pick up steam in March, we held a deep dive conversation with our relationship managers and our credit team.” He continued, “We looked deeply into all the sectors we thought would be most impacted. We talked about this being a defining moment for Vantage Bank and for community banks in general.”
The meeting was also called to contact every customer of the bank that they thought would be in the most impacted areas like hospitality, restaurants, hotels, and daycare facilities. Jeff pointed out that all those efforts were ahead of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). “We modified almost a billion dollars in loans for customers because we thought that was part of safety.” He said, “Safety was peace of mind for those customers.”
As a parallel effort, they initiated more remote business transactions and services. Jeff’s skills were put to the test by opening more digital channels for new accounts. “We expanded the drive-thru services to take care of customers and our employees,” he said.
Then the PPP came along, and Vantage Bank responded well, or as Jeff said, “All-hands-on-deck working through PPP as fast as we possibly could.” The solutions implemented by the incident response team impacted Vantage customers. Jeff said that those customers started to tell their friends and business associates the news of the great assistance provided by the bank to help them apply for the Paycheck Protection Program. Jeff interpreted the results as a momentum builder. “The growth at Vantage has been quite strong during the pandemic.”
Since they brought the two banks together, they have about doubled in size. “We’re right at 3 billion in assets today. A lot of that was working directly with those customers and having cohesive teams working together to take care of them. We came out of the gate very quickly with our response and our customers showed that appreciation; they’ve been net promoters of us,” Jeff stated. The team also dived into all the different segments and what we most impacted. They also had all ATMs replenished with money, anticipating that customers would seek access to their deposits. All of that was okay; however, Jeff said that lending became a big part of keeping things very active.
Concerning the closing of the international crossings along the Texas-Mexico border by the feds, that’s one thing Vantage Bank does not like. Their position is unequivocal; they are in favor of international trade. Vantage Bank has made efforts by calling the different congressmen to request that they open the bridges for Mexico’s shoppers. “We know that this has affected the community but the interesting thing that’s happened is we’ve had so much influx of support people working on the border because of healthcare. In a way, that has offset a lot of what would normally be impacted by closing the bridges.” But as he said, as those healthcare workers and law enforcement people start pulling back away, we want to make sure those borders are open so that there is no gap. “Mexico is definitely important to Vantage Bank.”
According to Jeff, one of the things that is different about Vantage Bank, if compared to others, is that they are not structured like most community banks. “We’re structured more like a product services organization. We have a customer experience team and a shared service analytics team, plus a development team, which most community banks do not have.” He added, “Those teams all work cross-functionally with all the other more traditional areas of the bank to ensure financial victories for our customers. So, our approach from day one was different than other banks.”
He also stated that his employees are part of the uniqueness of the bank. “It is really the way that our teammates work together to support our customer success, and it’s in everything that we do. It is a purpose that ignites us. We call that a people positive, growth culture.”
Jeff is a board member of the Texas Bankers Association. His wife is a board member of a child advocacy organization now for almost ten years and serves as a volunteer. “Civic activity, it’s something we’re looking forward to getting much more engaged in as we start opening up.” He also said, “Civic community organizations are significant to my wife and me and the bank. We support over 120 organizations here at Vantage Bank.” He mentioned that coming in at the start of the pandemic, he hasn’t had the direct engagement that he wants to have but he is looking forward to it. The morning I met with him, Jeff has just completed a tour at the Juan Diego Academy in Mission, Texas, and he is looking forward to getting much more directly involved within the communities the bank serves.
As far as hiring new personnel, he said, “The biggest challenge is not hiring, but it’s making sure that we can assimilate them well and get them off to a good path to be successful in a way that they understand our culture and our direction.” He said that it’s much more difficult when you’re doing it through video conferencing. About future expansions, he says there are plenty of good growth opportunities in the areas where they serve. “Finding the right type of teammates that fit well with Vantage, will only expand when we feel like we have that.”
Vantage Bank is also embracing FinTech companies. Some other community banks look at them as maybe a competitor. Vantage Bank looks at them as part of the solution. “We think FinTechs give community banks a more level playing field than they’ve had in the past. Because we can connect these different FinTechs to our backbone and give a graceful path for our customers to have access to them.”
Jeff stated that they are building a digital bank in-house from the ground up. Most community banks buy a solution off the shelf and integrate it into their core system. “We found a partner and we’re building it from the ground up. We also have customers involved in that process.” He said they would be rolling out a brand-new ground-up digital bank on the retail side later this year. And then on the business side, early next year; it is all from scratch.
“Great things are happening at Vantage Bank, and I can hardly wait to see what the future holds for us.” Jeff is from the Dallas Fort Worth area and has been married to his beautiful wife Heather for 26 years; together they have three children.
ABOUT VANTAGE BANK:
Vantage Bank Texas was founded in 1923 and is a family-owned community-based financial institution headquartered in San Antonio, with deep roots in the border regions of the state. We are focused on providing specialized banking services to small and medium sized commercial businesses as well as to our consumer and international customers who live and work in the communities we serve. The Bank has full-service banking centers in the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Laredo, El Paso, Fort Worth, Hondo, and Refugio.
When you get to know us, we believe you will find that we are a remarkable community bank. Vantage Bank prides itself on its culture and commitment to helping our customers make financial victories a reality.
