Interview: Sean Simpson

Sean Simpson

Division CEO Synovus Bank

How is Synovus Bank bolstering its digital capabilities?

The whole dichotomy between digital and physical comes up in a lot of industries, including banking. COVID-19 has accelerated adoption of online and mobile banking, but we’ve also heard from customers that being able to speak to a local banker — about fees, payments, loans, or anything else on their mind — is tremendously reassuring. While the adoption and enhancement of digital channels will continue, we believe customers still want a bank that’s relationship-focused and offers hightouch services, consultation and advice. We also know the way we provide these services will have to change to a more proactive approach and through multiple channels, especially including digital and mobile banking. We are investing aggressively in both, and we’re excited about our new digital and commercial banking platform, Synovus Gateway. With Synovus Gateway and all of our digital offerings, the overarching goal is to make it easier to do business with us.

What was Synovus Bank’s approach to the PPP rollout?

On Friday, March 28, the day after the CARES Act was signed into law, our team stood up an online PPP expression-of-interest form. One week later, with the official launch of PPP on April 3, we began accepting applications. The PPP application process was laborintensive, requiring extensive documentation and other steps that could not be automated or run through an API. With no precedent and very little guidance from the SBA, our team built a PPP processing system within a week.

For the next six weeks, stopping only for Easter Sunday, 500 Synovus team members worked practically round-the-clock, communicating with customers early and often to ensure timely documentation, processing, underwriting, and funding of PPP applications. In Tampa/ St. Pete, Synovus made 1,400 Paycheck Protection Program loans totaling $228 million, which is equal to around a third of the PPP loans we made statewide.

Banks are now shifting focus to begin the forgiveness process in relation to the various roll outs of the PPP program.

( ) Random, ProCredEx, TrustLayer, SkuX and eNotaryLog. Out of Tampa’s 45 fastest-growing startups, 31.1% were in IT Consulting, 24.4% in SaaS, 13.3% in Marketing, 11.1% in IT Security, 11.1% in Defense and the remaining 8.8% in Recruiting.

Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater had the advantage of standing on solid ground pre-pandemic, coming off of sustained growth from both an economic and demographic standpoint. Construction permit revenue decreased only slightly below 2019’s $14 million in 2020 and is expected to regain 2019 levels by 2021. The same can be said about occupational license taxes and local business taxes, which stabilized around $11 million for 2020-21 compared to 2019’s little more than $10 million.

What is more, Tampa’s general fund balance amounted to $109 million. Preparing for the future, Tampa is expecting a $5.5 million revenue decrease in its budget for services and fines from FY20, mainly due to a drop in the number of solid waste commercial customers because of COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions. Moreover, Tampa’s budget for FY21 is expected to