Isaura ‘Sara’ Tavares was recently promoted to assistant vice president of cash management at Bristol County Savings Bank. She has previously worked as a cash management officer and cash management specialist for the bank, as well as an assistant branch manager in its Freetown office. She is a graduate of the New England School for Financial Studies at Babson College.
PBN: What does your new role with Bristol County Savings Bank entail?
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TAVARES: My role as an AVP, cash management officer is to use my knowledge and experience of cash management products and services to find solutions to help our business customers enhance their operating effectiveness and improve efficiency.
I also work with our commercial lending and retail banking teams to provide internal support for their customers as they navigate our extensive suite of cash management services, as well as develop new relationships for the bank.
PBN: What has been the biggest challenge with cash management services since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic?
TAVARES: One of the biggest challenges that we faced not only in cash management but as a bank is the ability to meet our customers in person. At Bristol County Savings Bank, we are very relationship-focused and hands-on, so we had to adapt to meeting new and existing customers virtually.
Onboarding new customers also had to be performed digitally instead of face to face for meetings and digital training. The good news is we were able to quickly adjust to using technology to continue to support and work with our customers whenever they needed us.
PBN: Has the advice you give to business customers regarding cash management best practices changed at all because of the current economic climate?
TAVARES: Our advice has remained consistent: The best thing you can do to manage your business accounts is to have online access that allows you to monitor daily activity. We always encourage business owners, CFOs [chief financial officers] or bookkeepers to consistently and routinely review their account activity for any suspicious transactions – many like the routine we suggest of doing it while having their morning coffee. You can never be too vigilant.
While Bristol County Savings Bank has various means of security stopgaps to help mitigate fraud, it is always a best practice to monitor your accounts frequently and enable specific alerts to watch for unauthorized transactions.
PBN: How, if at all, has the national coin shortage impacted Bristol County Savings Bank and its customers?
TAVARES: Our customers and the bank have been somewhat affected by the “coin shortage.” Due to this shortage, our branches are seeing fluctuation and counts lower than typical at times, but we are holding our [coins] and processing our own shipments due to unfulfilled coin requests. So far, we have been able to keep our customers supplied by using these different tactics. However, our heavily retail-oriented clients express concern from what they hear on the news and experience with non-typical coin-order fulfillments.
Typically, in the past, businesses such as car washes and laundromats brought in excess [coins] as they received it. However, their coin counts have been lower than normal most likely due to a decline in foot traffic-based COVID restrictions and customers adopting a different means of payment method (e.g., debit card, Apple Pay, etc.) resulting in less exposure to possible contaminated surfaces.
PBN: What long-term effects do you think COVID-19 will have on cash management for banks, businesses and retail customers?
TAVARES: This pandemic has caused us to change and adapt in many ways as a society. From the bank’s perspective, we have learned to adapt our “hands-on,” relationship-based approach to banking by leveraging technology to help us continue to deliver this same type of personalized approach to our customers online as opposed to in person.
As COVID-19 continues to be of concern, now is a great time for businesses to learn how cash management services can help them conduct their business banking digitally. There are many digital banking product offerings that can improve business efficiency and help facilitate remote employees. Finding the right banking partner to help you assess, understand and offer professional strategic cash management solutions will be key.
Nancy Lavin is a staff writer for the PBN. Contact her at Lavin@PBN.com.
