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By Nathan Prewett
For the Tribune
TRUSSVILLE – Owned by Paul Bryant Jr., Bryant Bank is what Mortgage Loan Officer Drew Tibbs called one of Alabama’s largest community bank with more than $1.5 billion in assets. But it’s not the sheer size of the banking company that makes it what it is, it’s the principles that it implements in its day-to-day operations.
“He envisioned what a community bank should be and brought traditional values back to banking as much as he could,” Tibbs said. “So, we have a great record of strong community involvement, customer service-based values and always work to build a long-lasting relationship with a client.
We look at our customers as more than an account number, we look at them as a person. The bank prides itself on that.”
Building relationships is one of the cornerstones of the bank, where the customers mean quite a bit to the staff at Bryant Bank.
“In this day and time, banks focus more on the account and basically you’re another client in a file drawer,” Tibbs said. “We take a more handshake approach: local decisions, local approvals, local handshakes – that’s what Bryant Bank’s about. We’re about the actual relationship with the clients.”
One of the services that Bryant Bank offers is mortgaging. Tibbs has been a part of that service at the bank for five years, he said.
“We are a complete full-service lender, FHA [Federal Housing Administration], Fannie Mae, conventional lending and much more,” he said. “We’re based here in Birmingham for mortgage and are very competitively priced. You can also expect us to carry over that same bank mentality of customer service.”
“We actually go the extra mile for our customers. Even though we have online apps and we have all the technology we don’t hide behind that. We show it to our customers. We personally talk to our clients. We can come to you and we can sit down and go over the complete file with you.”
“Do unto others” is a virtue of Bryant Bank, Tibbs said. Treating others the way you want to be treated is something that he makes a point to do at the bank.
“It’s the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” he explained. “And I feel that the person that I’m dealing with at the other side of my desk everyday deserves the same respect that I would want in that same position.”
Now, for some who are buying homes for the first time, it can be nerve-wracking in how the process goes. Sometimes they don’t quite know what to do. This is especially true in online lending, Tibbs said.
“So many times there are first-time homebuyers in the market that will go to online lenders,” he said. “Online lenders will send them a bunch of papers – point and click. They point and click, and they don’t even know what they’re signing their name to. They don’t understand the process, they don’t understand everything.”
However, Tibbs said that Bryant Bank wants clients to know what’s happening every step of the way.
“We can offer that same service, that same pricing, the whole nine yards the online lenders do,” he said. “we just take it another stop by taking the personal time to educate them on exactly what they’re getting into.”
Bryant Bank is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and is an equal housing lender. Its ID number for the NMLS Resource Center is 224924.
Bryant Bank in Trussville is located at 137 Main St. and can be reached at 205-661-5900.