As a part of the Spring Bank family I wanted to share with you our efforts and plans in response to the current pandemic of Corona virus (COVID-19). While we remain calm and confident in our ability as an organization to manage the current situation, we believe that the threat to all of our stakeholders: community, employees, and customers is real and we have therefore put plans in place to operate under a range of different scenarios that will help limit the spread of the virus.
What are we doing to protect our employees, customers and community?
- We have redoubled our efforts to keep our environment clean and well sanitized. In addition to the regular daily cleaning of our branches, our staff are cleaning surfaces like door handles and ATM keys and screens on an hourly basis with an appropriate disinfectant.
- We have also communicated to all our staff that thorough handwashing is imperative, as well as frequent use of hand sanitizer and limiting shaking hands and close contact. Most importantly, we encourage all our employees to stay home if they are exhibiting any cold or flulike symptoms, and are letting all know that whether or not they have sick days available, in the current environment we will treat this type of responsible absence as a paid sick day.
- We are putting in place arrangements for most of our employees to work from home, where possible.
- For those who need to be here we will change hours and stagger schedules, to help everyone get to work in ways that reduce potential points of contact with the virus. Specifically, effective Monday March 16thwe will be changing our branch hours in the Bronx and Harlem. Please visit our Find a Branch page for updated hours for our Bronx and Harlem Branches.
- We are not aware of any of our staff or visitors testing positive for the virus, however, should it become known to us that one of our customers or employees gets sick from the virus, we have already contracted with a cleaning service to perform a deeper level medical grade cleaning of our premises to reduce the risk of anyone else getting sick from contaminated surfaces, and we have plans and procedures in place to operate remotely should we have to close during business hours to do such cleaning.
- To our small business customers whose business may be affected by the downturn, we are here to stand behind you, so please call us if we can be of assistance or if you are having any issues making your payments during this time.
What you can do?
We love our customers and our community and always want to see you in our branches, but for the near term, for all of our safety, we need to change the way that we interact. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to reach us so we can serve your banking needs. Call us! Email us! Take advantage of our telephone banking and e-banking products. This is the time to get familiar with our banking app and web offerings to do your banking business.
Just don’t fall so in love with them and stop visiting us again in person when things calm down.
Also, did you know that you can set up your Spring Bank debit card to work with Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay? Contactless payments are the way of the future and this is the time to use them to limit your exposure to the virus as you pay merchants, the subway or anywhere else.
We are in this together
We are about our community. We will continue to monitor developments and be assured that we will take whatever steps we can to support our customers and the communities we serve.
Sincerely,
Demetris Giannoulias, CEO
