May 7, 2020
Vol. 20, No. 51
In This Issue FOUR SEASONS
Four Seasons, by Kevin Box, in real life is located in front of the Center for Transformative Learning on the UCO campus, but this week is hidden somewhere in our paper. Email contest@edmondpaper.com with the correct location to be entered in the weekly drawing. For more information, see page 4.
No LibertyFest for 2020 See Page 5
FRIDAY, May 8
Partly Cloudy High 64° Low 44°
SATURDAY, May 9 Mostly Sunny High 68° Low 49°
SUNDAY, May 10 Partly Cloudy High 71° Low 48°
Jill Castilla, inset Mark Cuban By Kacee Van Horn Citizens Bank of Edmond CEO Jill Castilla never imagined partnering with someone like entrepreneur and billionaire investor Mark Cuban. When she saw a tweet from Cuban seeking a way to help people as they waited on their stimulus checks, Castilla responded and a partnership was born. Together, they were able to get desperately needed cash advances to customers in less than a week. Castilla already had programs in place to help customers, waiving overdraft fees, contacting business and consumer borrowers to offer deferred payments if their cash flow was restricted, but it wasn’t enough. After several rounds of e-mails and calls with Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, the two developed a plan for an overdraft line. “It was like a Shark Tank experience,” said Castilla, “I would pitch, he would
destroy it, and we’d go back and forth until we came up with this program.” Castilla was able to quickly take the idea to implementation. The Citizens Cares program allows eligible customers to overdraw their account up to $900 with no fees or interest and request deferment of loan payments. Bank customers can request access to the program on Citizen’s Bank of Edmond’s website. “We will also cash stimulus checks for non-customers with no fee,” noted Castilla. “Banks need to be walking with the community.” Knowing that still more could be done to help her customers, Castilla and her team worked 24/7 to help small business customers take advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program, or “PPP.” It was not an easy task. Banks were operating with a lack of knowledge about the program. It
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was unclear what the risks were and there was little to no information on a repayment or forgiveness plan. Guidelines directed the loans to be funded in 5 days, but community banks had no mechanism in place to do it and many were unsure what their role was. “It was like jumping out of plane without a parachute and trusting the government to build one on the way down,” said Castilla. “The program kept changing, so the goal post was always moving,” continued Castilla. “The final guidelines weren’t released until 24 hours before the program went live. We got access on Saturday night and the staff worked all night and all day Sunday. We were ready on Monday morning when the program went live on April 3rd.” In the process, Castilla realized an educational process was needed continued on Page 3