Banking on Relationships at FC Bank

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, when most people think about banking, they picture massive institutions, rigid rules, and transactions that can feel anything but personal. But for Jenny Saunders, president of FC Bank, banking is only effective when it's rooted in relationships—when institutions are visible, accountable, and deeply invested in the communities that they serve. Jenny's path from a small town in Ohio to leading a community bank in central Ohio has been shaped by advocacy, brand building, and a belief that banks can and should play a meaningful role beyond balance sheets. In this conversation, Jenny and I talk about why relationship banking still matters in an era of mega banks and neobanks, how FC Bank built real community presence and brand recognition in a crowded market, what women in leadership face inside financial services, and why issues like affordable housing, mass transit, and regulatory stability will shape the future of Columbus and community banking alike. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Jenny Saunders, the president of FC Bank. Jenny, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about your background, your journey to FC Bank.

Jenny Saunders 01:48Wow, it's a loaded question, right? So I'm from a small town called St. Marys, Ohio. So go Roughriders, if anybody knows who they are. It's a very small town. I always tell people, it's like Little House on the Prairie—either your parents are merchants or they're farmers. Mine were merchants. My parents and grandparents owned a men's clothing store. And I'm the first person from my family to graduate from college. I was going to study law, I was going to be an attorney. My dad really wanted me to be the first attorney general of the United States. Janet Reno has that honor, indeed. But when I was going to Ohio State, I started working for a bank part-time, and ended up falling in love with it. So the unusual thing about me is that I have a poli-sci degree, but I'm a banker. But yeah, that's really—it started out of very small banks, and sometimes I was bought through acquisitions. It's much more fun to be the one acquiring than the one to be acquired, right? But I worked for a lot of different banks, some large, some small, and found my way to FC Bank, and so that's where I am now. It's a perfect spot for me, I think, to finish my career. It's a nice community bank that has its roots in commercial banking, which I love, and we get to make an impact in our community, and we do it in the best city in the world, in my mind—or at least in the country, I guess, is what I should say.

Tim Fulton 03:46That's fair, that's fair. Talk a little bit about your experience—so, by the way, your poli-sci degree kind of translates directly, in my mind, to your leadership at the Ohio Bankers League. Can you talk a little bit about how you weave that political aspect of things into your work?

Jenny Saunders 04:08So I'm very fortunate to have been able to move up in the leadership role through the Ohio Bankers League, which is the trade association for banks across the state of Ohio, large and small. So we service all of them, and it's really cool to be able to advocate both here at the state level and at the federal government on the Hill, as well as with our regulators, for our industry. And it's not just about banking. It's also about our employees. It's about our communities. It's ensuring that all the things that are out there are helping to make sure that we're providing the best solutions and services that we can. And a lot of that involves legislation. Banking tends to be the political football for a lot of things. We're either the savior, or we're the gum on the bottom of somebody's shoe. And a perfect example of that is when the pandemic happened and we had the stimulus package, PPP. People loved us, right? We were building the plane while it was flying. We were really helping provide solutions, getting that money out. But then something else comes along, and now we're just all about junk fees. So it's just one of those things you have to understand about banking, is that there's going to be really big highs and really big lows from a political perspective. But I will tell you, there's something about being on the Hill and going through buildings and entering a senator's office and having an opportunity to sit down and talk to him about policy and the different things that we're looking to accomplish. It's a really cool moment. I had the opportunity in the spring to sit down with JD Vance's banking policy guy. And we had met JD Vance multiple times when he was a senator. And so just to be in that building and being able to sit down and talk to somebody that you know is that close, that gets me juiced. And it doesn't really matter who's in the White House at the time—we have to work with everybody. And so it's all about bridge building, forming relationships, and then really trying to deliver the message of what's going to really help the industry the best it can.

Tim Fulton 06:43I read before the interview, you had actually left professional life for just a little bit to help your family. And then you saw an ad on LinkedIn— Yeah, LinkedIn really works.

Tim Fulton 06:59—and then you had the job three weeks later, right? Were they new to this market, FC Bank?

Jenny Saunders 07:05So no. FC Bank came into the market in 2013 with an acquisition of Farmers Citizens, which was headquartered out of Bucyrus. Three branches here, a loan production office for mortgages. So we're established here. And I actually took a year off. My daughter is married to a Marine, and he was going to be stationed in Afghanistan for a year. And so we decided—my husband's like, I know you want to be home, and you're not super excited about what you're doing right now, so why don't you take that time and figure out kind of what you want to do when you grow up? And so I did that. What I figured out was that I didn't want to manage 250 employees anymore in retail, like I was kind of done with that sort of thing, and really wanted to get back to my roots. So I interviewed for a while, updated my resume, and then summer came, and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to take the summer off, kind of hang out with my daughter, my grandkids—and I have one more at home who's getting ready to graduate this year. And my daughter went to apply for housing, because her husband was coming home. And they're like, oh, it's going to be three months. And she was devastated. And they called two days later, and they're like, no, if you can be here next week, you can have this house. And I was like, oh. And so we're getting ready, but at the same time, I'm like, my husband's going to be expecting me to have a job, looking for one. And so I went out on LinkedIn, and as you said, this job was the first thing in my LinkedIn feed. And so they were very much at the end of their search. They had one or two people that they were kind of narrowing down, so I kind of came in at the end, but I just knew I was the right person for the job. And so I reached out, and fortunately, they felt the same way.

Tim Fulton 09:04Good. Talk about how you view—and I apologize, this is going to be a gendered question—how you view how women in leadership have to balance these things. So it's not only work and family, but also, for you, it is the volunteer work that you're doing as well. Do you have a philosophy behind managing that?

Jenny Saunders 09:33I don't think there's ever a philosophy to do that, right? And I think people always talk about work-life balance. There is no work-life balance. I think we've all agreed that that's sort of just a fantasy, right? Sometimes you're going to do work more, and sometimes you're going to do family more, and you hope you kind of balance that out in the end. I will say, with this job in particular, it has been heavy work-focused, but I do have the opportunity, if I have a really busy week with a lot of things in the morning and a lot of things at night, then maybe the next week I don't, and I can come in a little later, or I can try to adjust my schedule that way. It's certainly the Ohio Bankers League responsibility that's added a whole other layer into that, because of the travel and the different things that I've had to do for that. I think I love my job, and I think that makes it really easy, in some respects, to be able to do all of that. And I think when you're really involved with the community, and you really embrace that, and you get your entire team into it, it's so rewarding, and it doesn't feel like work then, right? Because you're doing things, you're giving back, and it helps you from a growth perspective, because you're organically growing—because as people see you out there in the community doing all the things, then they're going to be more likely to bank with you. Folks want to bank with someone that's got the mission right, that's aligned to what they're looking to do. And that's how we approach all of the communities we're in. It's really important to me and to the bank that we're helping the communities we're in be successful and thrive, and we have a corporate responsibility to lead the way on that. And I'm especially proud of what I've seen happen in Worthington. We're corporately headquartered there, and so when I first got here, I'm like, well, we're corporately headquartered here, then we need to be the bank of Worthington. That needs to be what happens. And when I was looking at it, we weren't really volunteering. I live in—my kids go to Worthington schools. I live just by Polaris Mall, so just outside of Worthington. But Worthington is my home. And I knew the things we needed to be involved with, and we weren't involved with anything. In fact, what we were kind of doing as a bank was we were just throwing everything up against the wall to see what would stick. Columbus is huge. So if you're going to have an impact doing that, that's probably not the right strategy, right? And so my mission initially was, we've got to own Worthington. Worthington has to feel that we're their community bank. And so you get involved with the things that matter—the schools, the concerts on the green, the libraries, all those different things. And then we started doing that in all the other communities that we were in, so that we could be that bank. And then we showed up—everybody came to volunteer, and instead of just wearing whatever you wanted, we wore similar T-shirts that had FC Bank on the back, so people knew who we were, same color, all of those things. Because it's not just about the money, it's about showing up and doing the work too, right?

Tim Fulton 13:01And it's about being a brand. Being your brand. Corporate personhood, if you will.

Jenny Saunders 13:05Right. And so we really did that. And we went from being like 13th, 14th in market share in Worthington to finishing like number three, behind Huntington and Chase, which is crazy when you think about that. And so then, once we had done that, we really tried to pick and choose, okay, where else are we going to be? And then we did the Columbus Crew, and that was kind of another big branding strategy to get outside of the suburb walls that we were in and get other people to know who we were. And we did it with women's initiatives too. There really aren't that many women in the C-suite in community banking. Now, we're very fortunate here in Columbus. We have all sorts of wonderful women leading banks. You've got Francie Henry at Fifth Third, and Mary Oaks and Susan at Huntington. But from a community bank perspective, we don't have women in the C-suite as much. And so I knew that was a niche that we could do as well. And so we kind of tackled it from that way. And honestly, what I'm most proud of is that people in Columbus know who FC Bank is now. You may not have known who we were beforehand, but a lot of people do. And for just having three branches in Columbus, where you've got a gazillion competitors, that's a big step and a wonderful testament to our marketing and the different things that we've done around that.

Tim Fulton 14:40That's fair. You talk a lot about relationships and relationship banking. Do you have a general philosophy there about both how you operate, how the bank should operate, and also how you would recommend a young person in the field of banking should operate in terms of relationships?

Jenny Saunders 15:02I mean, relationships have to be at the center of everything you do. And I remember when we were getting ready to rebrand—so we used to be green and white, now we're red and gray, and we have a cardinal in our logo that we didn't have before. And when we were talking to the marketing firm that was helping us to rebrand, they went out and did their research, and when they were getting ready to present to us, one of the things they said was, their research had shown that people do not want a relationship with their bank. And I had to stop the whole presentation. And I was like, I respectfully disagree with you. It's not that people don't want a relationship with their bank. It's the fact that they don't think they can get one. To me, that's a distinction, right? And so we all work at it very hard at FC to make the relationship the center of every decision we make, every policy we put in place. You need to be able to see it from everybody's side, right? How's it going to impact the customer, how's it going to impact the employee, how's it going to impact the community, how's it going to impact the bank? And so if you approach it from that, then you're typically going to make the right decision. And if you understand what your customers and your communities need from a relationship perspective, and you make it your mission to deliver that, then people are going to understand that you really are what you say you are. And I think a perfect example of this is we have something called a custom account for our businesses. Most banks will have two, three, four different products, right? It's like when you're a consumer, you go in and here are the couple of suggestions, here are the checking accounts you have, and this is what they come with. Well, what happens for everyone that does that, but in particular for businesses, because it's so expensive to bank, is that you'll either get an account that doesn't have everything you need, or you'll have to go to the next level of account and pay for something that you'll never, ever use, but you need the other things that are at that level. So our custom accounts—we literally sit down with a business customer, regardless of size, and we say, what is it you need the account to do? And then we literally build the account for them that way. So we pick and choose things from almost a buffet, you put it all together, and then you come up with this. And that, to me, is relationship building, because you're really listening to the client. Because I can sit here all day and talk all I want, but if I'm not really listening, and my people aren't really listening, then it's all about us, the bank, and not about the customer.

Tim Fulton 17:54Yeah. Well, and for those that haven't had to open a business account, that's everything from how many deposits are you going to be accepting? Is it going to be like semi-daily? Do you need to do credit card processing? Are you going to need to process payroll?

Jenny Saunders 18:08How much cash? Are you going to do wires? All of those different things, and all of that has a cost associated to it. And then, depending on how much you're going to keep in the account, all of those different things. And at the end of the day, what you want is, you want the customer to be able to earn as much on that account as they can, and you want it to cost the least amount that it can while it's still profitable, so that the bank makes a little bit of money, so that we can continue every day to go out and be there. So it's really fascinating when you think about it, because it's like a big puzzle trying to figure out what's the best thing. And it's not just about the deposit account. If somebody needs a loan, if somebody needs this, it all kind of goes in together. And if you're really looking at it the right way, you can come up with a solution that really helps the business be successful and still helps the bank accomplish its goals as well. And so that's really what we try to do on a day-to-day basis. It's a lot of fun. I mean, not everybody thinks banking is fun, but that's what I do, so I think it's fun.

Tim Fulton 19:20Fair. This is your niche. How do you think people perceive community banks versus larger banks?

Jenny Saunders 19:30So I think every size bank is important, because we need all of them, including credit unions, in order for the financial ecosystem to be successful and thrive. So your very large banks—you need them because they're going to do the international stuff, and they're going to keep all the things moving. And then you have your credit unions, who are very member-focused and mission-focused, to an extent, in how they're going to be able to help that niche. And then—let me go back—you have larger regional banks, which I also think are really important. We have several of them headquartered here, that kind of help fit that middle of the range. But community banks, especially as time has matriculated on, really are the ones that are reinvesting back into the community. So I take a deposit from you, I'm either going to put it back out in a loan into the community we're in, or I'm going to philanthropically support this thing for the community, or I'm going to help the hospital with this. So I think that's the thing about community banks. They've got more capital to reinvest in the community than, say, a credit union, just based on their size. And they're closer to that than, say, your regional or your very large commercial banks, who are looking to make an impact across a much broader footprint than a community bank. So I think that's really kind of the differentiator for us. And I think because we are smaller, we don't have nearly as much of a regulatory burden. We're still very much regulated. But your larger institutions, you can't go off the reservation so much, to go color in the gray, when you're trying to deal with a customer, to open an account, or maybe work a loan—because of economies of scale, you've got a jazillion branches, and you can't afford to do that. Because one person kind of going rogue on it is going to create a lot of issues for you down the road. Whereas a community bank, just because it's smaller and tighter, you can allow people to do that, because they're able to see the impact of that and how that flows. So I do think that's what attracted me back to community banking, was being able to operate a little bit in the gray so that I could meet the needs of the community. And there's nothing wrong with larger banks. They just, because of economies of scale, don't have the ability to do as much of that as, say, a community bank. Now, on the flip side, a large bank is going to have potentially more tech, or be able to do some different things than what a community bank could do. But I will tell you, community banks are really keeping up with that somewhat. I mean, if you go to most community banks, they have mobile banking, they have bill pay, they have the ability to do Zelle or something else like that. We have what's called ETMs, which are really ITMs, where you can talk to a person—you can go to an ATM machine, and if you press a certain button, you can actually talk to somebody on the screen, like a teller or universal associate. So a lot of different community banks have those as well. So we're definitely using tech to make it easy to do banking. So yeah, you need all of them.

Tim Fulton 23:33And, as we were talking about right before, you're taking advantage of products that are available to you in order to do that. And so, one clarification—the bigger banks can't be as flexible. It's not necessarily a regulatory issue because they have more assets under management. It's much more just, hey, we can get this up the chain a little bit faster, because it is only—

Jenny Saunders 24:01Yeah, thank you for that clarification. I certainly didn't want to imply that.

Tim Fulton 24:05I'm curious about—and maybe we're getting outside the realm of Columbus, Ohio, because we are—do you see the regulatory environment right now? Is it getting easier for, like, neobanks?

Jenny Saunders 24:20So that's definitely a focus right now, right?

Tim Fulton 24:24My definition of neobank—and this is just my understanding—is it's basically an internet-only bank, right? You can set up your account online, you never have to see anybody, they have some amount of KYC, which is know your customer, and then you have a bank account. And, at least in my experience, they offer a whole suite of services that may not be available at a community bank.

Jenny Saunders 24:51Yeah, I think they still offer the same things that a community bank can do, but they definitely have a much farther reach, because, you know, if you Google search, depending on what you put in, you're going to come up with them. I think the regulatory environment for neobanks—also, here in Columbus, we have a bank that potentially may come to fruition that's looking to just be stablecoin. And so, still in formation, still trying to figure that out. And then you have de novo banks—in Ohio, we have more de novo banks than anywhere else in the country. It's very hard to start a bank. The capital requirements are the same. And what is de novo? I'm sorry. A de novo is a brand new startup bank. So a bank that has not been in existence before. So we talked, like—a Delphi would be a de novo bank, or Fortuna would be a de novo bank. Got it. And so we want more banks to form and to come into creation, because you're seeing so many banks starting to merge and consolidate, and all of that is the normal cycle. But what happens is, every time a bank is bought or merged, you lose competition. And what you don't want is for it to get so tight that customers don't have a choice.

Tim Fulton 26:31I mean, theoretically, a stricter regulatory environment is creating that acquisition structure, right? Because if there is so much, quote-unquote, regulatory work to do, that's headcount, right? And so the bank can't be commercially viable.

Jenny Saunders 26:50It is very expensive. And the regulatory environment over the last couple of administrations has just not been favorable to banks.

Tim Fulton 27:00Sometimes for good reason.

Jenny Saunders 27:03Sometimes, yeah. And so the current administration—the pendulum has swung. And the problem for banks, though, is that we see these big swings one way or the other, depending on who is in office. And what we want is fair regulation that ensures that we're operating safely and that our peers are operating safely, so that our customers' and communities' assets are safe. I mean, that's what we all want. We don't want any rogue—I mean, what happened a couple years ago had a significant impact on all of us. And there were some unusual things about those particular institutions and the circumstances around them.

Tim Fulton 27:56I'm sorry, are we talking about—

Jenny Saunders 27:59I was actually talking about 2022, 2023, SVB. Yes. Sorry, that's where I'd gone.

Tim Fulton 28:07That's Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah, keeping track, right?

Jenny Saunders 28:10Yeah, there's those acronyms. So what you want is some stability. So whatever the regulation is going to be, let's stick to it. Let's agree to it and stick to it. Because what happens is, every time there's a change in administration, because we're not codifying any of these regs, they're just almost at the whim of whoever is in charge, and then you have big swings, and the banks are almost in a whiplash. So a perfect example of this is that there's been this reg that has been proposed for some time now, and it's cost banks—I mean, the whole banking industry, millions of dollars—to try and get our arms around it, to be able to put the system in place. It's a huge change. And now it looks like it's going away. We're happy it's going away. It was very burdensome on the banks to do the reporting. That happens a lot—banks tend to, because everybody needs a bank account. When the government wants to track something, when the government wants to keep their pulse on what's happening, they tend to come to the bank, because everybody banks, right? The problem is, one, we feel intrusive when that happens, but two, we have to build the systems and processes in place to be able to do that reporting. And, you know, 9/11 was a perfect example of that, which needed to happen. But the systems and processes that you had to put in place to be able to track all of that—there's a financial cost to that. And if some of these become so burdensome from a cost perspective that banks, to your point, are like, I'm out, then they look to sell.

Tim Fulton 30:05So, pivoting—what advice would you give to a young person, and maybe specifically a woman, who is entering the banking industry and trying to get ahead?

Jenny Saunders 30:18So here's what I would say to anyone, but in particular a woman: be your own advocate. I've been around for a while, and we're fortunate now that banking isn't quite the same as it used to be back then, but it's still challenging in community banking in particular. It's very much skewed more to men in the C-suite than women. A lot of that is because you don't have a lot of women in commercial banking, and that tends to be what feeds the pipeline to the C-suite for community banking. But if you're waiting for someone else to tell your story, if you're sitting back and waiting for someone else to advocate for you, to say what you're doing, that may never happen. And throughout my career, I've had a couple pivotal moments where—maybe not the best opportunities for me. I mean, for example, I was in a meeting once where I was really trying to present something, and I was told to shut up and do your job. And, you know, that's 20, 25 years ago—you're not going to see that now. But I could have just—I mean, I dusted myself off and kept back at it and found a different way to go about doing what I needed to do. You have to be able to do that. And women in particular, the reality of it is, you have to figure out a way to channel your passion, channel your emotions. There's a right time to use them, and there's another time where you just have to suck it up. And I would say, be your own advocate. You've got to be a champion for yourself, because you don't know what people are saying in the room when you're not in there. You'll often hear people say, well, find a mentor who, when you're not in the room, is in there defending you. But you don't know that that's happening, and unfortunately, women are not always in the room where decisions are being made. And I often tell people, it's not just enough to be in the room where decisions are being made. You need to have a seat at that table. And then not only does your voice need to be heard, but your opinion needs to matter and be respected. And that's for anybody, honestly, not just a woman. But those are the types of things that we have to keep our eye on. And it's hard sometimes to be your own advocate, because you have self-doubt, or you don't want to be shut down, or maybe it doesn't go the way you want it to go. But at the end of the day, the only person that's going to really help you get to the next spot, whatever that is, is you. And so surround yourself with people who are going to champion you, who are going to be your cheerleaders. It doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman. Who is your tribe? And you need to have a tribe outside of work that you can bounce everything off of that's work-related, that you shouldn't be bouncing off at work. And then you need to have a tribe at work too. But surround yourself with people who are going to be honest, who are going to tell you how it really is, but who are also going to support you and help dust you off when maybe things don't go quite the way you want them to.

Tim Fulton 34:24I had a friend of mine who referred to it as their personal board of directors.

Jenny Saunders 34:29Oh, I love that. Yeah, that is exactly what it should be.

Tim Fulton 34:34I end every interview with the same two questions. What do you think central Ohio is doing well, and what do you think it's not doing so well?

Jenny Saunders 34:43So I think central Ohio is just fabulous. And how we care about people, how we are collaborative—I mean, you hear about it all the time, right? The Columbus Way. People here are not afraid to reach out to somebody else, even in the same industry, or maybe something completely opposite, and say, hey, what do you think about this? Or, do you want to work on this together? And you don't see that everywhere. So I think the collaborativeness that we have here, the common drive to get us to wherever we want to go next, the general caring we have for everyone that lives here—I think that makes us very special. And the fact that we have the best national championship football team in the entire world sitting here doesn't hurt. Sorry—Ohio State graduate, so gotta throw that in, and a little obsessed with football. What I would say we don't—there are two things that have me very concerned about Columbus, and I'm sure you've heard these multiple times. One, affordable housing. We have a housing issue here, and we all know it. We just can't quite seem to figure out how to crack that nut. The other thing is mass transit. And I just don't—I was just talking to someone about this at a conference earlier this week—I just don't know how we fix that. Everybody here drives a car. That's why we have so much of the traffic issues we have. But not everybody has access to a car. COTA is trying its best, but we need much better mass transit to be able to move people around and get people to where they need to go. And I think, for being the 13th or 14th largest city in the country, depending on which survey you look at, our affordable housing and our mass transit are things that are going to hold us back until we can figure that out. And it's something I talk to people about all the time, so many amazing people and really bright people trying to put their minds to figuring it out—going back to what I said was so amazing about Columbus—but it seems to be something that we're just not getting a lot of traction on.

Tim Fulton 37:23That's fair. Jenny, thanks for your time. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Jenny Saunders 37:27Thank you so much. Absolutely.

Tim Fulton 37:40Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite banker. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.