When merger activity was completed March 20 and the name of Deposit Guaranty
National Bank, a division of First American, was officially changed to
AmSouth, a pair of Delta natives guided the transition - state executive
(overseer of Mississippi operations) and Leland native, William L. Watson
and Jackson area executive (city president) and Inverness native Stan Pratt.
Even before the name change, AmSouth executives took note of the bank's strength in the Delta. In the fourth quarter of 1999, the No. 2 producer out of 365 locations in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi was its Greenwood main office.
"AmSouth is very customer, sales and performance focused," says Watson. "Deposit Guaranty was very service-driven and community-oriented. From a management perspective and a philosophic point of view, both were very similar and compatible institutions. The primary difference was, AmSouth was probably more sales and performance driven."
AmSouth, now the 19th largest bank holding company in the U.S., was established in the early 1870s as First National Bank of Birmingham. Last year, the company listed $43.4 billion in assets, 661 branches and 1,343 ATMs in nine southeastern states.
"We measure our sales success by monthly and quarterly scorecards," Watson said. "We strive to provide better products and we're very relationship-driven."
AmSouth's organization is "tightly put together" with mission statements, understanding needs and relationships and basic values, he said.
"If something's wrong, make it right," says Watson. "Take time for people. Those values drive a lot of what we do. One of the things we took out was voice mail because it didn't fit in with our philosophy. When you call any of us, someone is there to answer your call or question 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
Branches are run autonomously, he said. "All of our city president's have control of their branches, making decisions on their own," says Watson. "One type of loan application now consists of just one page and we can give you an answer very quickly."
"Stan (Pratt) and I are primarily sales managers with sales meetings every week," said Watson. "When most bankers think about banking, they quite honestly think about loans. AmSouth has a very different strategy. Ninety-five percent of all businesses in the U.S. have less than $5 million in annual sales. Only 37 percent of those borrow money."
Pratt was born in Inverness, graduated from Inverness High School in 1963 and went into the Air Force. He entered Mississippi State University and after graduating went to work at DGB in Jackson.
"I've been there ever since," he says. "When First American acquired DGB, they moved me to Nashville. That was May, 1998. I returned to Jackson as city president in May, 1999 before I became area executive."
Watson graduated in the Leland High School class of 1958 before he headed to college in North Carolina, and went to work at DGB. After a two-year leave to get a Harvard Business School MBA, Watson returned to DGB.
"Stan and I may not know all of the young business leaders in the Delta, but we know their daddies and probably their granddads," laughs Watson.
"The Delta's agribusiness economy is a major driver for our locations in Yazoo City, Greenwood, Greenville, and Clarksdale," says Thornton. "We look forward to continuing serving our agribusiness customers with out new products and services."
AmSouth will bring several innovative products to Delta residents, such as family business transition planning, Thornton said.
"It's a very unique concept that no other bank is dedicated to," he said.
One new business credit product, Flexline, consists of a simple one-page application that serves as the note, Thornton said. This product can go up to $100,000 line of credit can be easily accessed by writing checks or using a debit card.
Business Express, another unique product for small businesses, allows personal and business services to be wrapped into one account with discount prices, Thornton said.
"It's a very, very popular product in traditional AmSouth markets," he said. "Tiered money market accounts for small businesses with very attractive rates will be available and we will be able to offer equipment leases to small businesses, something we haven't been able to do here."
AmSouth's biggest competition in Mississippi will be community banks, Watson said, adding that "we'll offer services they aren't able to," and that there are "no plans on the horizon to close any Delta branches."
Even though the official merger between AmSouth and DGB was Oct. 1, 1999, Watson and Pratt were already in place and the official name change was the last step in the transition.
"It wasn't widely known, but we had already converted a number of major systems that have a big impact on the public," Pratt said. "We had converted our trust and commercial loan departments, accounts payable, general ledger systems and investment services. If the customers didn't know it, we viewed it as a success.
On March 17th, we primarily converted deposit systems and small business consumer loan systems."
Employees in Tennessee, Louisianna, and Mississippi spent over 50,000 hours training on AmSouth systems, procedures and products. A special simulated training program was developed to help tellers learn the new computer system.
"The training requirement was so large that we actually went to a college registrar's system to track it," said Thornton.
On average, each branch manager spent about 130 hours in training, and employees spent approximately 88.5 hours in training. DGB branches "palled" with AmSouth branches, and during the transition, two AmSouth veterans were stationed at each location.
"It was a challenge to do all that training, continue to serve customers, and meet our sales goals, but our people have done it," Pratt said. "We've done extremely well and I'm very, very proud of them. They understand how to operate under AmSouth and it's going very smoothly. We gauge our success by the very high retention of customers."
The bank has three customer service contact options: 1-800-AMSOUTH, a customer service center open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, an internal one-call center for bank employees, and a "6200" line for technical assistance.
"We appear to be in very, very good shape after a lot of work and stress on very loyal people," Watson said. DBJ