Marcus Weber, President and CEO, and Brook Merritt, Executive Vice President and CFO with the Bank of Star Valley stepped into the SVI Radio studio on Wednesday, August 19 to announce their new Braves Reward Accounts.

(0:00) To another guest interview segment this morning and joining me live in studio is Marcus Weber, (0:06) President and CEO of the Bank of Star Valley. Also, Brooke Merritt joining us as well, (0:11) Executive Vice President and CFO of the Bank of Star Valley. And some new account offerings for (0:17) maybe some Braze fans today through the Bank of Star Valley.

They’re here to tell us all about it. (0:22) Marcus, Brooke, good morning. How are you guys doing today? (0:24) Good, Duke.

Thanks for having us. And boy, we’re excited about these accounts. (0:28) Yeah, absolutely.

Well, it’s good timing, of course, with the school starting up tomorrow, (0:32) actually. So tell us about Braze accounts. Marcus, what are these? (0:36) So we are excited to give back to our Braze fans.

So we’ve titled these the Braze (0:44) reward accounts. And for these accounts, these are targeted for our middle school and high school (0:49) kids. And for these, they’re pretty simple accounts.

They’re totally free. And when these (0:53) kids come in and get these accounts, they can get their Braze logoed debit cards, (0:58) and they can earn up to $5 in rewards each month. (1:01) Very cool.

So Brooke, how does it all work? Obviously, free checking and savings, (1:07) or maybe give us some more of those details. (1:10) Yes. So we have both options.

So if you just want the basic deposit account, or as us old (1:15) people would call it a checking account, you just come in and we can get that set up. You just have (1:21) to have online banking, which we would help them set up. And we want to teach those habits, right? (1:25) That it is important that they monitor their account.

Once a month, log in, look at that, (1:30) make sure everything looks good. Teach them how to use a debit card. They just have to do five (1:36) transactions a month with the debit card, and then they earn these rewards.

And that’s just (1:41) the deposit account. But we do have a savings account that is also an option. And if the (1:47) parents decide they want to do that with their kids, they can earn up to three percent interest (1:52) back up to $10,000.

So this is a great way to try and teach them how to save a little bit, (1:59) how to bank responsibly. Again, like Marcus said, there’s no fees, there’s no penalties. (2:05) If they don’t get their transactions done in a month, not a big deal.

It’s just a way that we can (2:11) teach them how to prepare for their future. Everybody needs a bank account eventually, (2:15) and how do you do it wisely and in a safe environment is what we want to create. (2:20) Now, Brooke, I’m no banker, but that seems like a generous interest rate for a savings account.

(2:24) Is that correct? (2:25) It is. It is. It’s definitely something we want these kids to save.

I mean, (2:29) some of them just got done selling 4-H animals or summer jobs, (2:32) and they need to earn some interest on that because the world’s expensive. (2:36) Marcus, tell us more about how this idea came about and why the bank decided to roll out (2:40) these accounts. (2:41) Yeah, this actually came about a year ago.

Our board met in our strategic planning, (2:46) and we said, hey, what is the Bank of Star Valley? And the Bank of Star Valley is (2:50) truly committed to Star Valley. We’re not looking to build elsewhere. We’re not looking to grow (2:56) elsewhere.

We’re looking to build Star Valley economically. Star Valley has done a lot for (3:01) the bank, and we’re looking to help Star Valley. And one way that we can do that is we can help (3:05) build financial education for our kids.

So we’ve strategically said, hey, we need to get into our (3:11) schools. We need to help kids with financial literacy. So we have been into our elementaries.

(3:16) We sponsor something called the Bonsai Program, and we help with our kids’ savings program. (3:20) So we’ve been into our elementaries, but then we saw this gap in our kids in our middle school (3:26) and in our high schools, and we thought, hey, we can help close that gap, and we can also reward (3:31) them as we do that, and we can also support our Lady Braves and our Braves as we do that. So we (3:36) feel that this Braves Rewards account closes all those gaps, and boy, we’re going to have a fun (3:41) time as we do it, too.

Love it. Absolutely. Marcus Weber, President and CEO of the Bank of Star Valley.

(3:46) Brooke Merritt, Executive Vice President, CFO and Studio. Tell us about the Braves Rewards account. (3:50) So, Brooke, it’s easy just to walk in and open it up, right? Do they need a parent with them, or (3:55) how does that all work? So yes, we do need to have a legal adult guardian on the account with the (4:02) kids, but there’s several ways they can do it.

They can do it online. We’ve got QR codes on all (4:06) of our flyers that parents can just scan, and you can do it all electronically. If a kid already has (4:12) a checking account, they can just call us, and we can just roll it right in, and that does not (4:16) require new signatures.

So if they’re interested, which we hope they are, and parents are interested, (4:22) just give us a call, and we can make it as easy as possible to get these things opened, (4:27) and the fun part is coming and picking out which debit card design they want. We have several, (4:32) so it’s going to be fun. I was going to say, can the parents get the Braves branding on their debit (4:38) cards, too, because that sounds pretty neat to me.

Yes, we are not restricting those to just (4:43) these accounts. Anyone can have one of our Braves accounts, and for you UW fans, we have some new (4:49) logoed ones as well. Nice.

Love it. All right. Anything we missed on these Braves accounts that (4:54) you guys like to mention today while we have you? Nope.

We sure appreciate your support, (4:58) but we are excited for the upcoming seasons as sports have kicked off this week, so we’re excited (5:03) to support those Lady Braves and those Braves. Absolutely, and Bank of Star Valley, of course, (5:08) a big part of our broadcast and doing the Man of the Week commercials again. Those are always a big (5:11) highlight, so looking forward to that this football season.

That’s, again, Marcus Weber and Brooke (5:16) with the Bank of Star Valley, and go open your Braves Rewards accounts. They’re available right (5:21) now at the Bank of Star Valley. It’s the Weekday Wakeup, SBI Radio.