BB&T and SunTrust, Now Truist - Let's Go Podcast

If you have been listening to Let’s Go you’ll know that our recent episodes have been a series on creating a Financial Roadmap for you and your business. This episode was supposed to be about risk. But as I speak, the world is in the midst of dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic. The novel coronavirus pandemic has had a tremendous impact on all of us. At BB&T and SunTrust, now Truist, the health and safety of our teammates, clients and the communities we serve is our top priority. We hope that you and your families are remaining safe during these uncertain times.

And so talking about risk today, seemed naïve and off-base. I personally don’t have answers right now. But along with Zack Sink who has been my partner on the Financial Roadmap series, we felt it was really important to hear from a business owner and see how they were fairing in these times. 

And so instead of covering Risk per se, in this episode I speak with Jamie Wade who owns Sand Hill Kitchen a small restaurant in Ashville, NC.

For more information about Sand Hill Kitchen, check out their website at www.sandhillkitchen.com.  

In episode 2 of our Financial Roadmap Series, we focus the conversation on Maximizing Cash Flow. But where many people think maximizing cash flow is only about speeding up collections or controlling receivables, we take a ‘top of the funnel’ approach and discuss getting more cash through the door by discussing how important a website is to maximizing revenue. Host Christy Sammons, and Financial Roadmap advisor Zack Sink speak to internet web designer Rachel Cunliffe about how to increase business through improvements to your business web pages.  

Welcome to Let’s Go, a podcast production of BB&T and SunTrust, now Truist. 

I’m your host Christy Sammons. Let’s Go podcast are designed to help you ask those important business questions about where your business is headed, and how you’ll get there. We’ll give you the industry tips, tools and advice on how to reach your goals. Let’s Go!

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The novel coronavirus pandemic has had a tremendous impact on all of us. At Truist, the health and safety of our teammates, clients and the communities we serve is our top priority. We hope that you and your families are remaining safe during these times.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Lynette Bell, President of the Truist Foundation. 

The Truist Foundation is the blending of BB&T and SunTrust Banks endowed foundation that would blend the two banks’ charitable missions. The Foundation was fully launched on March 2 but nine days later the World Health Organization declared the fast-spreading novel coronavirus a pandemic. It quickly became clear that the new foundation, with $600 million in assets, would need to shift gears to help the company respond to the health crisis. The Foundation found itself having to pivot quickly on its mission. 

And in the role as the Foundation president, Lynette is responsible for the philanthropy strategy, deepening strong partnerships with nonprofits and leading corporate foundation donations to strengthen local communities. Prior to the merger Lynette served as enterprise community reinvestment officer for SunTrust, leading the community development program to help underserved communities receive economic support to grow. In her more than 30-year career with SunTrust, she has held positions in operations, regulatory affairs, bank examinations and compliance. Lynette has served as a board member of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership and National Church Residences. 

Listen now, to hear more. 

As one of a handful of initial adopting banks, BB&T is excited about the industry’s newest payment type now being made available to our clients – Real Time Payments. Real Time Payments is a big change! RTP is the first major payment type addition since the 1970s and there are potentially huge shifts in how a business approaches their AR and AP business processes. In today’s conversation with Sue McBride, the head of the Treasury Payments and Receipts Product Solutions group, we start to peel back what Real-Time Payments can mean for a business and the implications for how they do business. 

For the past several months, I’ve been meeting with our clients and BB&T executives. One of the ongoing topics has been around Payments Fraud and the threats that commercial clients face. Our conversation today is in the office of the Financial Controller of the Archdiocese of Atlanta and speaking with Michael Warren and Tom Salkeld. Just a little background on these two before we begin… In his current role since 2009, Michael Warren is the Controller at the Archdiocese. Michael lives in the Atlanta area and has had an incredible career ranging from auditor at large consulting firms, banking and healthcare organizations to CFO.  And if you’ve listened to some of our other podcast, you may recognize Tom Salkeld’s voice. Tom is a Product Manager and Vice President in our Treasury Services division with oversight over Fraud Protection Solutions which include Positive Pay, Account Reconciliation, ACH Positive Pay, ACH & Check Block services. Let’s Go and listen now to that conversation.