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Thinking back, Kate Wolfe remembers a conversation that took place prior to Patriot Federal Bank opening its doors in December 2005. “We were developing our disaster recovery plans and the subject of floods came up and we just kind of laughed.” Little did Wolfe, Vice President and Chief Operating Offi cer of this $17 million institution in Canajoharie, NY, realize how soon those floods wouldn’t be a laughing matter.
Patriot Federal was formed to give Montgomery County, in east central New York State, and the surrounding areas, a community bank. All of the other banks based in the county had been absorbed by larger, out-of-town institutions. The investors, educators and businesspeople from the area, wanted a hometown bank with a local presence.
June 2006 had already gone on record as the wettest in history. With many tributaries of the nearby Mohawk River already over fl ood stage, and the heavy rains that began just after midnight on June 28, the stage was set. What started out as another rainy day in upstate New York soon became a day no one would forget. As Kate Wolfe says, “It was a true 100-year fl ood.” Shortly after Patriot Federalopened its doors that morning, the waters of the Mohawk began to rise dangerously with no signs of stopping. The county declared a state of emergency at 9:00 a.m. As Kate Wolf remembers it, “We sent most of our staff home because many of them live in rural areas.
The rest of us stayed to get our daily work done. We didn’t realize how bad things were until we called the Sheriff’s department and were told that our building might be fl ooded.” The remaining staff scrambled to move equipment to higher ground, not bothering with the paperwork. At 11:30 a.m.,emergency teams came into the bank and told them they had a half-hour to evacuate. “We grabbed a server and carried it out of the building,” remembers Wolfe. Ten minutes later they were told they had fi ve minutes. “We grabbed some personal items and left. The water in the parking lot was almost up to our waists. Our lobby ended up with three feet of water in it.”
Kate Wolfe turned to her service provider, Fiserv VISION, for help. “They jumped right in, without hesitation. They helped us keep running behind the scenes even though our doors weren’t open. Fiserv VISION was there to help us work things through.”
Kate’s call for help came into Fiserv VISION’s Network Installation Services. They secured a laptop and loaded it with the applications the bank would need to access Fiserv VISION’s computers remotely and shipped it overnight to the bank’s president, Gordon Coleman. Next, they reconfi gured a workstation at Fiserv VISION headquarters to mirror the bank’s Cleartouch desktop. This gave Patriot Federal access to the identical applications and settings the bank established when it came online with Fiserv VISION. All of their data remained safe and secure in Brookfi eld, WI. Using her Internet connection, Kate Wolfe was able to run the same transactions she was able to before the fl ood; transfer funds, perform inquiries and maintenance and generate reports. Even though the lobby was closed for four days, the bank was not.
For a denovo bank like Patriot Federal, the fi rst months of operation are critical to its success. Any event that would have knocked the bank out of commission for an extended period would have had dire consequences. So how did Patriot Federal weather the storm?
Let’s hear what Kate Wolfe had to say, “July was our biggest month ever for opening new accounts – on a folding table.”
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