Photo courtesy of Liberty Bank
Jeffrey Culp
Deputy Chief Financial Officer
Age: 59
Industry experience: 37 years
Liberty Bank created the role of deputy CFO in response to the bank’s growth. Its occupant, Jeffrey Culp, will be looking to help guide the bank as it aims to keep that trajectory. Culp will be responsible for the bank’s accounting and treasury functions. He joined Liberty in 2020 as a senior vice president and head of financial planning and analysis. Most recently, he was as the CFO of the bank’s business transformation office. Now as deputy CFO he will look to find avenues for Liberty Bank to continue to scale upwards despite the uncertainty currently buffeting the U.S. economy.
Q: In this current banking landscape, scale is important. How can Liberty continue to grow and improve?
A: When I joined Liberty Bank back in 2020, Liberty was probably between $4 billion and $5 billion [in assets] and over those five years there’s been a whole series of different strategic initiatives that we’ve embarked upon to build what we called the community bank of the future. Things like launching a digital bank – Owners Bank, which is dedicated to the small business owners. We completely replaced and upgraded our ATM network. We’re also doing a strategic initiative around customer relationship management tools such as Salesforce. These are all the examples of trying to build and put in place those factors that are going to help drive scale for the organization.
It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to ensure that the board is supportive of what we’re doing, deliberate and then execute upon it. That’s one thing I’ve been really pleased and impressed with as part of those conversations with the executive leadership is we do things very deliberately and thoughtfully. That’s obviously critically important for a bank, but it’s wonderful to see those items come from the drawing board to ultimate execution, and that’s what’s been part of driving our growth, and that will continue to drive the growth going forward.
Q: How important is it to get younger people involved in banking careers?
A: I think that perfectly aligns with this apprenticeship program that Paul (Young, Liberty Bank’s CFO) launched in in concert with the AICPA. Paul was looking for a way to not only upskill folks within his CFO organization, but to be able to attract talent into the organization. It’s always been my experience, working at different banks, that the finance organization is always an exporter of talent to different areas of the bank. It usually wasn’t an importer. So this apprenticeship program, in concert with the AICPA, was just what he was looking for to try to not only upskill existing employees, but to attract new employees. The employees who go through this program work towards their charter global management accountant designation. I think most people are probably more familiar with the CPA designation, but the charter global management accountant designation is geared a little bit differently. It’s really more geared towards private industry and goes more in depth on certain topics that perhaps aren’t in alignment with the CPA designation.
It’s been such a fantastic program that Paul has launched here. When we would be looking for summer interns, or advertising for more junior accounting positions, if you were to go back three years ago, four years ago, if we got a handful of resumes, that that was a good day. For our most recent hiring of a couple folks into this apprenticeship program, Nick Lacovara – who heads up our financial planning and analysis team – received over 200 applications to be part of the apprenticeship program. So the word is getting out that not only is Liberty a great place to work because of our culture, but in terms of wrapping our arms around and providing opportunities for employees to further their career, but also to bring new employees into the organization.
Q: How can times of volatility affect bank operations, and how can any potential return to stability help he bank find opportunities to increase revenues or increase operational efficiencies?
A: There’s opportunity in stability and there’s opportunity in uncertainty. Certainly, I think we all prefer a more certain as opposed to volatile environment. Think back during 2020, when The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates 150 basis points in one month in response to COVID just really wreaking havoc on the economy. With low interest rates at that point, it obviously makes it difficult for banks to lend at, let’s say, robust pricing or robust yields on loans. At the same time, if interest rates are super low, it’s difficult to reduce your deposit pricing, because deposit pricing is pretty much already at the floor. While many banks then started going long on investments and tying up money, trying to get a little bit more yield, we were extremely patient, knowing that eventually interest rates would turn around.
We were sitting on probably a $1.5 billion of overnight funds, and we certainly deployed a little bit here and there, but in comparison to some of our peers, because we compare ourselves versus a listing of 14 peer banks that are similar to us in size, similar to us in business structure, also similar in terms of location. There was a number of banks that felt the need to reach for yield, we did not. With the board’s approval, we took a really conservative, deliberate approach. Then as interest rates started rising in, 2022 and 2023, we were able to deploy all that excess liquidity and generated just absolutely spectacular record results for our organization. So I think that’s an example of during uncertainty, you can put strategies in place and execute upon those strategies to deliver performance, and during the stable times, that’s when times are good for businesses. That’s when times are good for banks who can help support those businesses within the communities.
Culp’s Five Favorites
- Favorite Sport – Football
- Favorite Book – “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom
- Favorite Music – Classic Rock
- Favorite Movie – Back to the Future
- Favorite Dessert – Bananas Foster
