Texas Security Bank (TSB) speaks the language of entrepreneurs.
Founded in 2008 by 14 successful business leaders – who left comfortable corporate jobs to invest their own money and sweat equity into its success – the bank has a laser focus on the unique needs of entrepreneurs. One of the original cofounders, Executive Vice President and Chief Experience Officer Shon Cass, reflects on the genesis of TSB. “We had all worked in larger financial institutions, and, like many of our (entrepreneurial) clients, we felt we could make a better mouse trap.”
Cass and the remaining executives took on the risk of launching TSB, and have managed to achieve just that. Today, Texas Security Bank is a recognized ally to independent-minded, manager-owned business leaders. As TSB celebrates 15 years in business, the bank has experienced exponential growth – as have the bank’s clients, who continue to benefit from far more than TSB’s banking services, including a revolutionary approach to business-building education.
Not Just a Bank, a Learning Hub for Entrepreneurs
TSB branches do far more than handle banking transactions. They serve as economic and educational hubs where Cass and his colleagues teach best business practices to their clients. “Our clients are typically business owners that have started the business, inherited the business, put their sweat equity into it, sacrificed to make it grow, and continue to maintain that business. We're not focused on industry-specific sectors. We serve businesses that are typically managed or run by someone with ownership,” Cass says.
“They’ve made a sacrifice and care very much about their businesses. They may or may not have a college education. They may or may not have a business discipline or background in accounting or marketing; so, early on, we started a significant education program designed to bring that content and education to them in a safe non-sales environment.”
Dubbed the TSB Academy, Cass and his colleagues teach an extensive 12-month education series for business owners and their key players. “These classes are specifically geared for the business leaders and the (next generation of leaders) they’re raising up from a succession-plan standpoint. We take them through a deeper dive into major topics areas like accounting, marketing, and sales. We've had a tremendous amount of success, not only through the business owners gaining that content, but also through them networking and discussing their problems with other business leaders who are having similar problems.” Making this level of investment, year after year, into local businesses is just one of many tangible examples of the fierce loyalty with which TSB serves its clients. In return, TSB clients love their bank and their bankers.
In addition to being a highly well-run financial institution with multiple benefits for business leaders, the ingenuity of the TSB Academy and other specialty services has earned the trust and respect of its clients. TSB’s unique corporate brand of delivering best business practices hinges on multiple touchpoints with its busy clients, making themselves available 24/7 through a powerful digital banking platform.
Not Satisfied With Second-Best Innovation
“I've been in banking for over 25 years, and technology has advanced exponentially in the last five to seven years,” Cass says. “From a historical perspective, one of the biggest technological advancements in my early career was doing deposits through an ATM.
“Looking back at that time, and now thinking that today we can make a deposit on our phones; we can deposit through a scanner on our desk; we can log in and submit our invoices and have those invoices paid electronically via check or ACH or credit card – that is astounding. And so, with the clients we serve, we make it a priority to deliver these best-in-class digital tools to help advance their businesses and make them more efficient.”
When Texas Security Bank first opened its doors, digital transformation was sweeping and quickly disrupting the financial services industry. This high-velocity dislocation of traditional, age-old banking services poised TSB to gain an immediate competitive edge. By creating itself as a digital – not incumbent – bank, TSB didn’t have to back-engineer and recreate its processes to accommodate a digital transformation and was able to leapfrog the administrative burden borne by so many other financial institutions. “So, not having to go back and layer the digital experience into a structure that was already designed for in-person transactions, but really being able to start fresh, was important for us.”
In its search for digital excellence, it took TSB a couple of attempts before finding the ideal digital banking partner.“(Q2) was our third digital or online banking platform change,” Cass says. “I knew that if we selected Q2, it had to be the right decision because I couldn't put my customers through (another digital transition) if I wasn’t absolutely sure.
“We spent a lot of time researching and just really ended up appreciating how Q2 was leaning into technology and how that technology could benefit our customers and our bank. Today, about 65% of our transactions are conducted online. For a bank like ours, that's pretty incredible because typically in the commercial space, those customers are interacting inside the branch, in person. But, we've created an environment where not only do we have strong relationships, but we've also given clients the opportunity to transact their business in a digital format on their own schedules.
“When Q2 came on board, they were able to quickly solve a long-standing issue we had been having, which helped our clients and back-office employees right away. We leveraged, right off the bat, Q2’s single sign-on integration to remote deposit capabilities (RDC). Every bank has RDC, and their clients are using it, but in our environment, it is actually a product that we give to our customers to use as well,” he says, demonstrating yet another out-of-the-box approach TSB takes to support its clients.
“When we look at our Q2 metrics, for example, we have a very high number of clients engaging with the online platform. Almost all of our clients are engaging with the online platform. When you stop to think about that – how the physical brick-and-mortar is not really the bank anymore – and that it's becoming the digital platform – we’re going to double down on innovation.
“We’ll continue to lean into that. The more we can bring those conveniences to our clients, then the better businesses they're going to have, and the more efficiently they're going to be able to run those businesses. The other benefit is that we become more efficient on our side of the bank.
“And, we’re taking advantage of the technology that Q2 has to offer. We’re using Centrix. We’re using the Accelerator Program. We’re using the Q2 Marketplace. We’re leveraging fintechs for our clients much faster than I could ever do on my own. I don’t have to go through an extensive project to conduct due diligence. I don’t have to put that strain on my resources at the bank. Q2 does all of that for me.
“We’re launching Treasury Onboarding soon and we’re really excited about how that platform is going to allow us to take what is a very paper-based system – a cumbersome process – and put that into an automated digital platform. Quite frankly, it’s going to transform the way we onboard clients, which is very important for a small community bank. It’s the first impression that our clients have with the bank.
“The better we are at onboarding that customer, the stronger footing we're going to have with that customer going forward. And so, we're excited to leverage the Q2 technology to remove a lot of steps from the process. One of the biggest benefits is that it actually moves the customer information into the Q2 platform and then pushes it even further into CentrixPIQS, which eliminates keystrokes and duplicative efforts.”
Overall, Texas Security Bank continues to find new ways to benefit its entrepreneurial clients using Q2’s best-in-class digital banking platform. “Because of the innovation that Q2 is bringing to the table, we now have a bigger vision of what we can do with the platform.”
Read Texas Security Bank’s case study here.