Jill Castilla

President & CEO at Citizens Bank of Edmond

@JillCastilla | LinkedIn Profile

Edmond, Oklahoma

Citizens Bank of Edmond (CBE) continues to operate on the same Downtown Edmond intersection where it was founded in April 1901. We are a fiercely independent $250 million community bank with unique ownership structure comprised of fourth-generation family ownership, an Employee Stock Ownership Program and community stockholders. As an innovative leader in community banking, Citizens Bank of Edmond provides commercial and consumer financial services, mortgage origination, cash management and mobile banking solutions as well as accessibility through non-traditional avenues. Citizens Bank of Edmond is consistently recognized for outstanding achievements in banking, customer service, community service and social media by local and national organizations.

What makes CBE unique in your opinion?

CBE is a big player in the financial industry as a small community bank. We take our role as a key player in building downtown Edmond very seriously and are not afraid to carry out innovative projects and tasks to serve the community. Some examples include running Heard on Hurd, a downtown festival of 18,000 people, supporting cash mobs to support local small businesses and being on the forefront of many new financial products to serve our customers. The culture here is unlike any other. Our employees are actively seeking to help and volunteer on councils, boards and nonprofits. There’s a sense that everyone’s all in it together and we are just part of a bigger process of building the downtown community together.

You’ve had to “fight for the life of the bank”. Can you elaborate?

Back in 2009, when I returned to Citizens, our bank was in crisis. In under 3 years, our team was able to fully turnaround the bank resulting in one of the fastest recoveries in the nation without adding capital. The process of improving the bank’s credit quality and retooling the operations of the bank reinvigorated our commitment to stay independent. Since then, our bank has returned to being the leading community bank in our metro area and our team was recognized as the “Top Team” under $40 billion in assets by American Banker.

You are one of the most active CEO’s on Social Media, especially Twitter. Can you describe why this is important to you and the Bank.

Community bankers are already active and play a big part in the local community. I think it’s really important and stays in the character of our bank to be accessible to our customers. Social media just brings a whole different line of communication available to serve the customer and actively engage in the community. Since starting my Twitter presence, I’ve been able to connect with folks that I would’ve never thought to have connected with and it’s provided many opportunities for CBE. Our culture is very open to social media and we are on many different channels responding and engaging. The visibility of having the CEO on something like Twitter or social media makes the company look that much more transparent and real, and it’s important to me to provide that at CBE as a community bank.

Can you describe CBE’s bank branch strategy?

After going through some rough patches with the bank, it was important to evaluate what we needed going forward to continue to prosper as a community bank and serve our customers to the best of our abilities. Closing down the three branches is not an easy announcement to make to our community and customers, but we handled it with transparency and have also installed video “ITMs (interactive teller machines)” to continue the touch points that we have with the customers in those areas. It has been a successful effort because we didn’t lose any customers in the process and our ITMs have been extremely successful and one of the most innovative projects in the industry.

What are the pain points with respect to innovation from a Community Bank product standpoint?

Community banks are small and nimble, so our “vulnerability” is also our biggest asset. We are able to make decisions quickly to meet the needs of the customer and are not tied down by bureaucratic red tape to get things done. It’s a great environment to be innovative, we’d like to think that we’re a 114-year-old with a start-up mentality. So from a product standpoint, as mentioned above, if something is not available in the market, we can put our heads together and work with local vendors to produce something like the ITMs and can continue to push forward in innovation.

Your management team is mostly women. Do you believe this gives you a competitive advantage?

I’m extremely proud of our team for making this once in a lifetime opportunity as American Banker’s Best Team Under $40 Billion (keep in mind, there are literally thousands of banks under this asset-size). It is extremely unique and rare to see the number of women we have on the senior team and I can only say that they all bring so much skills and insights to the table, regardless of gender.

Do you feel being a women for a community bank in the American Midwest gives you a competitive advantage?

As a woman, it’s extremely rewarding to serve my community in any capacity that I can, and I feel that regardless of gender, it’s important for community bankers to serve their communities. It’s part of being a community banker. So I am incredibly privileged to work with an amazing team and be a part of a thriving city. That’s what gives us our competitive advantage. We wouldn’t be Citizens Bank of Edmond without the “Citizens” of “Edmond” and we can continue to be competitive because of those two elements which make up our success.

Who influences you?

I have many influences and community leaders I look to. Some favorites include my husband, Scott Williams, nationally renowned branding and organizational development consultant and Becky McCray, a small business advocate. Both Scott and Becky are Oklahomans and I regularly lean on them to make my business better.

Who do you consider to be strong women leaders in the banking / FinTech space?

I personally find that Sheryl Sandberg’s mentality of “Lean In” has been an inspiration for women leaders everywhere. And people like Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer and others are leading the way for women everywhere by being real and authentic with their struggles and their lives. We need more female leadership in banking – shining examples of Cynthia Blankenship of Texas and Julieann Thurlow of Massachusetts are two of my personal favorites – both have unique institutions that are exceptionally successful and impactful.

What do you see as the 3 leading future trends for FinTech?

Mobile-friendly, the Internet of Things and wearables. At CBE, we are poised and ready to handle any new tech that is coming up. We’re already involved in new payment methods and mobile deposit capture, but are always looking at new areas of development and growth. We want to be on our feet constantly bettering ourselves as a community bank and we want to continue to be innovative and leading the charge in fintech.