Meet the expert that will help you grow: The Agri-Access relationship manager
Community banks are the central pillar of agriculture lending, thanks to the hard work and passion they put in every day — but that’s not all. Our relationship managers at Agri-Access can help you deepen this critical relationship between your lending organization and your producers by providing the financing and expert guidance to help you grow your lending portfolio and expand your customer base.
We’d like you to meet three of our relationship managers.
- Ray Smith
- Pat Hawkins
- Tracy Nelson
Read on or watch the video for more, in their own words, on how Agri-Access strengthens the critical relationship between community lenders and the producers that turn to them for capital.
Q. How can banks expand their ag loan portfolio while reducing their credit risk and interest rate risk?
Watch the video here:
Get access with a secondary market financer
Tracy Nelson: We’re a secondary market provider for mostly agricultural community banks and some regional banks. We work with them to make sure that they can provide the long-term fixed-rate financing needs for their farmers.
Offload the loan, the credit risk
Ray Smith: Agri-Access offers a suite of products for its client banks that provide them the opportunity to offload their farm mortgage loans to us. That allows them to utilize their capital to continue to grow their business. Agri-Access assumes the credit risk for those loans that we purchase from the bank, while they earn loan servicing income.
Better meet the growing needs of farmers
Pat Hawkins: The needs and the capital expenditures on behalf of these farmers are growing exponentially. Many of these local banks have certain hold limits, and that’s where Agri-Access can truly come in and help them meet all of the needs of their farm customers.
Q. What should community banks look for in a secondary market financing program?
Ongoing service and support
Ray Smith: It’s not just the origination process, but it’s what happens after the fact I think that’s really important:
A foundation in agriculture
Pat Hawkins: A deep-rooted experience and background in agriculture. To have a staff of people that understand and know the cycles of agriculture, and to be able to relate to what your clients are going through. Without that experience and background, we don’t think we could do you or your customers the justice that they deserve.
Opportunity for more robust lending products
Tracy Nelson: Most of the bankers that I work with are not able to go very long on the maturity scale. Fifteen years, 20 years, all the way up to 30 years, is a lot of interest rate risk to take on. What we are able to do is provide the mechanism for funding for those types of loans, allowing them the opportunity to provide that long-term fixed rate to their agricultural real estate loan customers.
Q. What are the benefits of working with Agri-Access?
A cohesive team, solving problems on your behalf
Tracy Nelson: We have a wonderful team! We run a lot of ideas past each other, such as “What are the ways that we can help our lenders serve their customers better and better?” So we are collaboratively coming up with new ideas all the time, and that’s the exciting part of it.
Top-notch support
Ray Smith: We have a great staff behind the scenes. Even after the loan closes, we have a team that is supporting our client banks in any sort of post-closing matter, partial releases, anything that might come up: easement improvements, payoff calculations, billing and collecting payments.
Adds lending capacity to meet your customers’ needs
Pat Hawkins: Our Scorecard program can have a fairly quick turnaround for you and your customer on primarily real estate transactions. Or if you have a specialized transaction involving a full underwrite, we can dig in and roll up our sleeves to get you answers as efficiently as we possibly can.
And quite frankly, if there’s a client or a customer that you believe exceeds your capacity or capabilities, with our knowledge and background and our ability to take on sizable transactions, Agri-Access has a wealth of experience and background that helps lend itself to bringing some of that expertise to you, and in turn bringing that directly to the clients.
Keeps your relationship front and center
Pat Hawkins: Our participation program allows you, as that local community bank, to be the lender of record. You continue to service it. You are the voice for that client. You have all the communication with the client.
Agri-Access is always ready to help!
When farmers or ranchers are central to your book of business, only a secondary market financer that matches your passion for agriculture will do. As you can see, our relationship managers are focused on finding solutions to help you better serve your ag clients. If you have any questions, just reach out to one of our relationship managers to get the conversation started!
