Signature Bank of Arkansas Weathers A Case of Mistaken Identity

When banks see their names in headlines, there’s a good chance the news is bad. In March, Signature Bank of Arkansas (SBOA) saw its name splashed across national headlines, and the news indeed wasn’t good. Only, it wasn’t actually its name. The addendum “of Arkansas” never meant so much to CEO Gary Head and his team at SBOA.

Gary Head

On March 12, New York state banking officials closed Signature Bank New York, a crypto-heavy banking institution with offices in New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada and North Carolina, after depositors withdrew $10 million in two days in the aftermath of the Silicon Valley Bank failure.

The sign outside a Signature Bank NY branch office in Manhattan.

The Signature Bank New York closing represents the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history, according to the FDIC. The bank listed $118 billion in assets when it was closed. Adding insult to injury, on March 14 the Justice Department announced it was investigating the New York bank for failure to scrutinize clients’ activities for signs of money laundering.

Meanwhile, Signature Bank of Arkansas — founded in 2005 and owned by White River Bancshares of Fayetteville, remains a strong community bank with locations in seven Arkansas cities. One in Rogers is the state’s first fully bilingual, Spanish-speaking branch location in Rogers. This year’s first quarter saw the bank cross the $1 billion threshold.

Tori Bogner

But when headlines flash news of “Signature Bank” with words like regulators, failure and closing, local SBOA customers were bound to notice. And they did. But Head and Tori Bogner, SBOA’s senior vice president for marketing, were prepared. They agreed to visit with AMP about what turned out to be a wild ride into spring.

AMP: So … March 12. Just another day at the office?

Head: [breathes deeply]

Bogner: [chuckles] The Ides of March were certainly active this year, weren’t they?

AMP: Have either of you ever experienced anything like this before?

Bogner: Believe it or not, we have. After the events of Jan. 6, 2022 Signature Bank New York severed its relationship with Donald Trump but was not active on social media. So, when the public went looking for an account to post their comments to, they found us. We posted a disclaimer and notice of nonaffiliation to our social media accounts and went radio-silent on social media to keep disparaging comments directed toward their organization away from posts about our community bankers.

AMP: Did you have any kind of heads-up about what was going to happen?

Bogner: When the news broke on the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Signature New York’s stock took a hit. As their name began circulating in the news, several of our bankers were on alert and made sure I knew confusion might be coming. We had a conversation on Friday evening about what we might need to do to create some distance, and I remember telling our COO, “For better or worse, we’ve been through this before, so I’m ready.”

AMP: Once the announcement about Signature New York hit the wire, how long was it before you started receiving calls, emails, etc.?

Head: I began making personal calls immediately. I received very few calls from people I had not reached out to. You’ve got to be proactive when you realize an opportunity that might besmirch your name has come up. It’s better for you to tell the story than wait ’til someone else does.

Bogner: The FDIC released a joint statement with the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve at 12:21 p.m. [on March 12]. I got a text at 5:45 from a friend with an article link accompanied by “Have fun!”

That evening, we sent a communication notifying the entire team of the situation and asked everyone to report in on the number of communications they received as well as the severity of their customers’ concerns. We were able to see when that number started to subside and adjust our communication strategy accordingly. Once the local media picked up our media alert and posted our nonaffiliation statement in conjunction with the national newsroom stories, I felt like the tide began to turn in our favor.

AMP: How do you turn something like this, a potential PR nightmare, into a PR opportunity?

Head: A center point of our culture is sharing cellphone numbers, so you can reach your banker when you need them, not a phone tree. Whether that’s at 2 p.m. or 9 p.m., our team will take your call. It was a win for our way of doing business to be able to be there for everyone who needed reassurance that we were indeed unaffected and, in fact, stronger than ever.

Bogner: No press is bad press, right? We’ve been very grateful to the media partners who have worked with us to spread the word that we are indeed separate and nonaffiliated entities.

As a community bank, we’re relationship driven. When our bankers have taken the calls from their customers, or proactively reached out to them, they’ve had great opportunities to reaffirm our commitments to each of them. Our bank is in a great position, and stronger than we’ve ever been.

AMP: Is SBOA now the last standing Signature Bank?

Bogner: No, there are several additional, unaffiliated Signature banking brands across the country. We’ve formed a bit of a “coalition” to attempt to divide and conquer the misinformation. The Illinois-based Signature’s logo was actually used in a major network’s breaking news story about New York. Outside of that unfortunate mix-up, what’s affecting one of us is affecting all of us, and we’re trading ideas and sharing efforts so we can all continue to serve our customers with the very best we have to offer.