Eric Lawson is the CFO for County National Bank. Recently on WKHM he said they are winding up a strong year.
“through three quarters of the year now and although we haven’t reported yet we’ll be doing that at the end of this week the year has gone quite well for the bank through all the expansion that we’ve had and sometimes you have to sacrifice quite a bit when you expand but we’ve expanded into a couple of different markets now with adding Kalamazoo and working towards adding a Lansing office in really the next couple of months those have all gone and been really a creative to our bottom line we’ve still been able to perform quite well even in an array environment which no one’s happy with I don’t think regular people are happy that rates were high and honestly the banks aren’t happy either it’s tough for a lot of good clients to qualify for loans when their rates are you know in the eights the nines really high so for us it’s good to start seeing a little bit of rates falling I guess as we seen over the ast month and that’s helped us so we’re we’re working through the end of 24 were really focused on finishing the year strong and then 25 is right around the corner from a finance perspective”
Eric expands a little bit on accretive.
“okay you have a great vocabulary you just said a word I have never heard in 45 years here A Creative a creative”
“so when you help me out with that so that you can anything that helps the bottom line or adds to something is going to be a creative so if if you have if you go into a transaction and you have to pay a certain amount of money but that transaction causes you to earn more than it’s a creative but if it causes you to earn less now you’re at a handicap a discount”
The headquarters for CNB are in Hillsdale.
“they have a lot of open buildings that are starting to be filled whether it’s through graduates of the college or just people coming back to the area and so you’re starting to see that building add to the”
“traffic in the area and and good traffic in the sense you have people going through the town and for us that’s great to see because I think a town that was thriving as Hillsdale Hillsdale was to see it again work its way up it’s kind of like watching what we saw in Jackson over the last 20 years when when Jackson had those same issues and so Hill’s a small version and took a little longer so do you guys have a relationship with the with the college yes oh yes significant relationship they’ve been with us for a long long time and I think I think there are counting they put this on their materials but they’re counting numbers like one I mean it’s really it’s that it’s that long of a relationship with the bank”
The CNB Radio Show is Tuesday mornings at 9:30 on NewsTalk 970 AM/101.5 FM.
