*Spring City, TN Branch Relocation*

My big news for the week is that we are relocating our branch in Spring City! This is great news for several reasons. The Spring City branch is currently housed in the oldest of our buildings and it would need some renovation if we weren't moving. The Spring City branch used to be Community National Bank's main office so its been around for a while.

Secondly we are moving across the railroad tracks into a brand new shopping center that includes a hotel and restaurant. All of "downtown" Spring City is on the opposite side of the train tracks from the freeway, including our current branch. Sometimes, when trains come through, the road that connects the freeway to downtown gets backed up. Now we will be on the freeway side of the tracks and you won't have to wait for the train to get to our bank. Also this shopping center has the only hotel in Spring City.

So our oldest location will have the newest building. That's great news for CNB! Even though I don't work at that location, I look forward to seeing what that new building will do for our business in Spring City. Talk to you next week!

Busy, busy, busy . . .

Friday, the 15th, will make 4 months that I have been here at Community National Bank, and my work load is really filling up! It's exciting, because I would rather be busy than bored. So while I was trying to think of what to write this week, my mind went a million different directions because I'm working on so many things now. Here is a potpourri of things I'm involved in:

The ATM at Bryan College is coming along well. It looks like next week will be the week. I have a couple of marketing ideas lined up for that roll-out to get us the kind of publicity we need for this machine and hopefully get us a few new accounts as well.

I'm also involved in doing a marketing blitz to try and get some accounts from some local merging banks. That's exciting because we have a really good idea.

My Admin Assistant is leaving to have a baby and stay at home, so I have new daily responsibilities. That means I have to do something very important for the bank every day between 2:00 and 3:00. Guess I need to start thinking about a backup if I ever want to take a day off.

And the most exciting thing I'm working on is still Top Secret, but it involves expanding our business. I'll share more on that as it becomes public.

So just a quick update this week on a mixture of things I'm working on . . .

Is this thing on? Is anybody out there? If you're reading this I would love to hear from you (even if its just to say "Hi"). A dialogue is more interesting than a monologue. Talk to you later!

What is a Risk Assessment?

Risk Assessment is the new buzz word for bank examiners and it has been keeping me busy this week. Being a CPA and former auditor, I was familiar with the concept of a risk assessment, but not to the extent currently being called for in banking. Essentially, a risk assessment is a rating of the hazard or peril in a certain area or type of transaction within a business. Every regulation and area in the bank needs a 'risk rating'. This rating is usually hashed out in a meeting of knowledgeable people in the bank. The ratings are usually Low, Medium or High. Areas in a bank that need a risk assessed, for example, are loans and deposits. How much hazard or peril is inherent in a bank's Loan Department? Each bank will be different based on their size, location, and personnel. It looks like I will be busy for quite a while assessing the risk in all of the different areas of our bank.