Daniel ReyesPresident & Chief Executive Officer
Priya VenkataramanChief Financial Officer
Thomas AchebeChief Operating Officer
Helen KowalczykChief Risk Officer
Marcus LindqvistChief Technology Officer
Rosa DelgadoHead of Retail Banking
James WhitfieldHead of Wealth Management
Hon. Eleanor Hastings (Ret.)Chair of the Board
Dr. Samuel OseiDirector
Catherine Moreau-BlakeDirector
Robert TanakaDirector
Dr. Anita SharmaDirector
William OduyaDirector
Harvest starts Monday. Sixty days until the one payday of the year. If you lend to farms and you don't know what that sentence means, you shouldn't lend to farms. Meridian Trust has 214 agricultural loans with a single November payment date. Ten years ago it had none. That's what a board seat is for.
Q4 Red Folder went to the board this morning. Twelve pages, five risks, as always. This quarter's top item is not credit and it is not rates — it is a vendor. If you are a community bank and your core vendor's parent company just changed hands, that belongs on page one.
Read all twelve pages on the train. Page one has my full attention.
We have a 340-page runbook for exactly this scenario. Page 2 of the Folder references it, as it should.
Thirty-five years ago this week I counted my first cash drawer at the Salem branch. It was $11 short. My manager, Dolores, made me count it four more times until it wasn't. I think about that most days: the number is the number, and the only way out is through. Happy anniversary to the twelve people who were hired that same autumn and are still here.
Dolores trained me too. She also made me re-count. I now understand why.
The number is the number. Framing this for the finance team.
Our eighth annual 'How to read your financial documents' workshop for seniors is November 12 at the Portland branch. Free, no sales, no sign-up sheet that becomes a lead list. Bring the annuity contract you never understood. Last year we found two people paying 3.1% a year for a product that paid 2.4%.
I attended as a civilian in 2022 and learned something about my own pension statement. Recommending it to my bridge club.
Second Chance Checking passed 900 accounts this week. Eight years ago people told me a product for customers other banks had rejected would be a charity. Default rate: lower than our standard checking. Charity would have been fine too. It turned out to be good banking.
The Fed data has said this for a decade: access is not the same as risk. You proved it with a product. Sending the numbers to a colleague at the SF Fed.
Q3 balance-sheet one-pager is up. Loans-to-deposits 81%, uninsured deposits 19%, cash and securities covering 2.3× anything that could leave in a week. It is one page because a customer should be able to read it standing at the counter. If you can't explain your balance sheet in a page, the problem is the balance sheet.
Still one page. Still the most honest thing a bank can publish.
Red Folder cross-references it. Two documents, twelve pages between them, whole bank covered.
Hearth broke ground on 24 units in Sisters today. Meridian Trust is the construction lender, and I recused myself from the vote, which Helen made sure of before I could. By next fire season, 24 more wildland firefighters will be able to live in the county they protect. Kyle and Marisol would have been 34 and 29 this year.
Recusal noted in the minutes, as it should be. The loan was approved 8–0. You'd have made it 9.
Bend branch staff asked to volunteer on the build days. I said yes before asking anyone.
Four years since the core cutover. A reporter asked me this week what the secret was. Running both systems in parallel for four months and reconciling every account every night was the secret. It was expensive and boring and it is why nobody noticed. Boring is the goal.
The board heard 'parallel for four months' and asked about the cost. I asked about the alternative. We approved it in one meeting.
Six years of customer-linked executive pay at Meridian Trust: half of leadership bonuses tied to satisfaction scores and complaint-resolution time. Complaint-resolution median went from 9 days to 2. Profit went up anyway. If you want a bank to treat customers well, pay its leaders for treating customers well. It isn't complicated. It's just rare.
Half my bonus depends on whether a customer in Bend was called back the same day. I check. Daily.
The complaint summary in the board packet and this pay model are the same idea from two directions. Good.
Our annual independence vote was Tuesday. Nine directors, nine votes to remain an independent Oregon bank. We hold the vote every year, whether or not anyone is offering to buy us, because independence is a decision and decisions should be made on purpose, in minutes, with names attached.
Nine to nothing. Five years running. Thank you, all of you.
I voted the way the customers in the complaint summary would have. Easy vote.
214. And the Woodburn dryer loan makes 215 next week.
The hazelnut price, the November weather and the export market are page three of the Red Folder every quarter because of you.