Page 62 - BusinessWest October 12, 2020
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    economic shutdown at the start of spring that continues to wreak havoc.
Michael Oleksak remembers the first few months of the year, of hear- ing occasional news about the novel coronavirus back in January, and much more of it as February crept along.
“Then, from mid-March into April, everything was a blur. It just spiraled,” said Oleksak, executive vice president, senior lender, and chief credit officer for PeoplesBank, before discussing the
Because there had to be a ‘next.’ Who would have thought it would be a pandemic?
“This will be the fourth economic cycle I’ve been through, and every one has been different,” he added. “And this one is far different than the others. We’re not seeing a lot of new activity.
I think everyone is kind of hunkered down, for lack of a better word, in sur- vival mode.”
As Allen Miles, executive vice presi- dent at Westfield Bank, put it,
Michael Oleksak says new lending activity has been down because many businesses are “in survival mode.”
 “I’d been asking myself for years, ‘what are we missing? What’s next?’ Because there had to be a ‘next.’ Who would have thought it would be a pandemic?”
“obviously this one was a lot different. You couldn’t see the train wreck coming; that’s the best way to explain it. It just got dropped on us.”
What happened next in commercial lending is an oft- told story recently, but one worth telling again. What will happen next ... well, no one really knows. But banks will certainly take lessons from a
     PPP surge and other measures that fol- lowed (more on that later).
Blurring the picture further was the very uncertainty of what was coming. Having experienced several economic upheavals, from the bank failures of the early ’90s to the bursting of the dot- com bubble in 2000 and 2001, to the housing crisis in 2007 and 2008, he had no idea what the next crisis would be.
“I’d been asking myself for years, ‘what are we missing? What’s next?’
challenging past seven months as that story takes shape.
Lending a Hand
Miles said Westfield Bank started reaching out to loan customers in February when coronavirus became
a more widely reported issue. In mid- March, like other banks, it was actively sending employees home. And then the storm hit.
From mid-March into the start of
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 22 OCTOBER 12, 2020
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