Sawyer Savings Bank will ring in its 150th anniversary with a special community event this Sunday, September 5 from noon to 4 p.m. at Cantine Field in Saugerties.
The event will feature a number of activities like corn hole, sack races and a bouncy house for kids, fried dough, music provided by various radio stations the bank works with and a barbecue by Brooks BBQ.
“True to a community bank, this is not just for our employees, the entire community is invited whether they are Sawyer Savings Bank customers or not,” Jim Whitaker, the bank’s president said.
Whitaker said this year the bank has committed to giving $150,000 to local not-for-profits, nearly double what the bank does in a typical year.
Recalling the bank’s earliest days, CEO Doug Sturges said it first opened its doors when there was no electricity and customers came to the bank by foot or on horses and the Village of Saugerties hadn’t even fully developed. “It’s interesting to think what the place might have looked like back then.”
Jenn Gutheil-Denier, Sawyer Savings’ vice president of customer experience, said the bank moved in 1871 into the Russell Block, a building that’s no longer standing at the corner of Main and Market streets, a space now occupied by a parking lot. It later moved to its present location on Market Street.
Today, in addition to its Saugerties headquarters, the bank has expanded with branches in Marlboro, Highland and most recently New Paltz, adjacent to Woodland Pond. Whitaker said another branch could be very much a reality.
Through its existence, the banks have weathered events like the 1918 flu pandemic, the Great Depression and countless banking crises over the past century and a half. Sturges credits its longevity to determination and not trying to overextend itself or jump into fads just to get a quick payout.
“This bank has always been a conservative bank,” Sturges said. “We had leadership at the trustee level that were determined to remain independent. In the 1980s and 1990s, regional banks were selling out all over the U.S.”
“A lot of them sold out because they needed to sell, they got into situations that they would not have survived,” Whitaker added. “We just made a decision to stay conservative and maintain capital that lets us continue to move forward.”
Through those challenging times Sawyer Savings steered clear of that and remained here for the community, Whitaker said. “It’s a great place to work with a family-type atmosphere around the bank.”
More recently, the bank pulled through the COVID-19 pandemic without closing for one day, an accomplishment Whitaker takes pride in, even if it meant going drive-up only during the height of the 2020 lockdown.
Whitaker said the bank also dived right into helping small businesses with the Federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) last year, lending $8 million with a focus on smaller loans no larger than $350,000. “That served our business customers perfect. Most of the loans were under $50,000.
Whitaker said one common theme Sawyer Savings staff heard while working on PPP was that the larger banks were not giving customers seeking smaller loans the time of day. “If it was less than $70,000, they were not even returning phone calls.” And Sawyer leadership knew this was the perfect opportunity for the bank to step up. “It was a lot of work done in a short time period.”
Whitaker said in the end all the hard work paid off, as the Sawyer bank picked up numerous accounts from customers fed up with larger corporate banks. “They were so upset with their bank,” Whitaker said. “When their former bank tried to get them loans, nothing was happening. We got it done for them in a day.”
All of Sawyer Savings’ decisions are made locally in Saugerties, not at a faraway corporate office, he said, and while countless businesses were laying off staff during the height of the pandemic downturn, the bank took an aggressive stance on staffing to ensure it could keep its branches open and then split up teams to keep the doors open. “The whole team pulled together and we’ve been fully operational since late spring. We’re hoping not to have to reinstate that.”
He cautioned that things are still not back to normal, even as the bank has worked hard to get there. “Most people are still wearing masks, and it just seems to be ramping up again,” he said speaking of the Delta variant-related surge in COVID-19 cases in the area and across the nation this summer.
“Community banks did a great service through COVID,” he said. “It does make a difference, knowing your bank does make a difference.”
Whitaker said perhaps the biggest change in community banking in recent years is the internet and cloud computing. Customers demand the ability to bank anywhere and Sawyer Savings has been able to find the right strategic partners to meet that demand while still maintaining the hometown feel the bank has traditionally had, he said.
“You don’t have to be a large commercial bank to offer commercial bank services,” he said.
Even as day-to-day banking shifts increasingly online, Whitaker finds that when people are doing bigger transactions like buying a house, they still want to come in and talk face to face. “When it comes down to big transactions, they want to sit down and talk it through.”
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