When it comes to being engrained in Carter Bank & Trust’s tradition of care, there’s no better example than Tyler Carter. While he has only been working at the Bank for seven and a half years, he has been around the organization his entire life as the grandson of our founder, Mr. Worth Harris Carter, Jr.

“Banking was never pushed on me while I was growing up, but I decided to pursue it as my career,” says Tyler.

He joined the commercial banking team in 2012 at the Corporate Headquarters, working with municipalities and providing support to senior commercial lenders. Last June, he transitioned his role as the local commercial banker for businesses in Martinsville, Henry County, and Franklin County, while still working with existing relationships developed throughout the bank’s footprint.

Growing up, Tyler Carter has seen the bank change over the years and embrace modern technologies as a way to deliver banking products and services. He believes these technology upgrades came at the perfect time, considering the current state of the world and the health and safety concerns surrounding in-person service. The Bank also spent the past few years building out the footprint of the commercial team. Before, the commercial team primarily stayed central to the headquarters; now they’re empowered to forge localized relationships. It was these changes that prepared the Carter Bank & Trust commercial banking team, along with the community banking team, for the volume of work they faced by participating in the Paycheck Protection Program.

“Even with the technology, it took a lot of people and manpower hours to make it happen,” Tyler reflects.

For Carter Bank & Trust, the first few weeks leading up to the start of the Paycheck Protection Program felt more like counseling than banking. All they could do was be there for the customers, understand how the pandemic was affecting them, and prepare for a crash course in assisting customers in acquiring those loans that would help them keep their doors open.

By the time the second round of funding became available, the commercial and community banking teams were ready at the starting line, thanks to their partnership with Fiserv. They were so prepared, that the Small Business Administration portal was the only thing slowing them down.

“The SBA portal had some issues due to volume, so things started out slow,” says Tyler. “I’m a very curious person, so I started poking around the Fiserv portal looking at various applications and identified some discrepancies between what information we were provided and what the application required. My fear was that if left alone, we could be looking at problems when we submit them to the SBA portal.”

He brought those concerns to Rich Spiker, executive vice president and chief lending officer. From there, Tyler Carter found himself in the role of quality control for the application process. They built a team of people to review the applications before submission to identify any gaps of information that could result in a rejection.

The teamwork that he witnessed throughout the process was unlike anything he had experienced before. Micheal Gander, vice president and Lake Norman market manager based out of our Mooresville, jumped into quality control to provide assistance in the review process, and ultimately took over the lead role as the time commitment of the Program grew longer. Dawn DeHart, senior vice president and director of community development lending based out of our downtown Roanoke office, was also instrumental to the process, leveraging her contacts at the Small Business Administration whenever a question or issue arose.

While Tyler wasn’t in direct contact with many of the Bank’s customers helped by the Paycheck Protection Program, he worked diligently to make sure each of them had the best chance to received funds. He’ll be celebrating some big wins with his local commercial customers nonetheless.

From here, Tyler knows there will be a lot of adjustments to be made for businesses and banks alike. While most financial institutions typically take their time changing, he expects to see the financial technologies they depend on become even more prominent in their business model and even explore new innovative options to provide the tradition of care they’re known for.