Navigating Banking As A New Couple
Article Courtesy of ANB (Amarillo National Bank)
Newly-weds, meet ANB – the Brazos Valley bank that will walk with you and your partner through all of life’s transitions!
ANB is proud to be the largest family-owned bank in the nation. Founded in 1892, cattleman B.T. Ware settled in the Texas Panhandle and started the bank, that would become ANB. Five generations later, ANB is still led by the Ware family.
This all-in-the-family approach allows us to be different. It also speaks to stable, conservative leadership with a focus on the long-term not the next quarter.
“That kind of stability says a lot about who we are,” ANB’s Senior Vice President Suzanne Neuberger explains. “We’ve had the same leadership across multiple generations. You don’t have leadership changes where the whole direction of the bank changes along with it. Hardly any banks have that kind of history.”
At ANB, we like to keep it simple.
- NO outside shareholders
- Personal information kept private
- NO red tape or bureaucracy
- Fast local decisions
- Customers always come first
- Large lending limit
- Support our local communities
- Have FUN
ANB’s local touch becomes immediately visible when customers need to reach out to the bank. “If you call us, you’ll talk to a person. You don’t have to navigate through 10 buttons and an automated voicemail system. You can speak to someone who lives here in Texas instead of some call center on the East Coast,” she says.
One of the things Neuberger likes most about ANB is its size. Extremely small community banks might have less flexibility related to loans or local generosity. Extremely large global banks end up fenced in by red tape, making them slow to respond to opportunities in the community. But ANB exists in the “sweet spot” of banking. It’s big enough to meet customer needs—but not so big that size gets in the way of service.
“We are the perfect size. Being family-owned gives us the lending authority to get things done quickly. For instance, we can make fast decisions on loans,” she says. “Really big banks tend to be disconnected and that makes them slow. It’s difficult to be agile when you’re answering to outside shareholders or Wall Street.” As a family-owned bank, ANB doesn’t answer to outside shareholders. That helps it prioritize community involvement and investment.
Families are fun, so it also makes the bank an enjoyable place to work.
“We love our bank,” Neuberger says. “We love our community and customers. Yes, we will go through serious times together. But we try to have a light heart. This isn’t just a job. We are here to make our communities better and stronger.”
To learn more about ANB, visit anb.com
Talk together
Last names are changing; families are uniting; belongings are coming together; and finances are quite possibly merging. Here are 10 questions you and your significant other should absolutely talk about relating to your future finances:
- Where would you like to be in 5-10 years?
- What are our assets and liabilities?
- Should we keep our finances separate or combine them?
- What about our investments?
- How will we handle daily spending decisions?
- Who will be responsible for paying the bills and preparing the taxes?
- What is your tolerance for financial risk?
- What are our insurance options?
- How does your credit report look?
- How will we tackle existing debt?