Small Business Week Presenting Sponsor, Exchange Bank - A Long History of Helping Small Businesses Succeed

An interview with Rolf Nelson, Senior Vice President of Exchange Bank and 2014 Chamber Board Chair

Tell us a bit about Exchange Bank’s dedication to Small Businesses?

Exchange Bank is honored to sponsor Small Business Week because, as a community bank, small businesses are the foundation of our business banking core. Exchange Bank’s partnership with the Chamber goes back to the Chamber’s founding in 1906, and this longstanding partnership has been mutually beneficial. Small businesses make up more than 90% of the Santa Rosa Chamber’s membership, and both the Chamber and Exchange Bank can point to a long history of helping small businesses succeed.

What do you see as some of the key challenges facing small businesses?

Small businesses can run up against a unique set of challenges like gaining access to capital, securing full-service financial partners, and finding banking products and tools to make their enterprises more profitable and more efficient. Exchange Bank helps address those challenges with a suite of lending products like SBA, equipment financing, lines of credit, and working capital loans.

And with 18 branches in Sonoma County, access to local credit approval, and small business lenders that come to your business, Exchange Bank is local, convenient, and knowledgeable about the needs of our small business clients. Our loan, deposit, investment, and trust services are designed to meet the needs of the small business owner.

What are your thoughts on how small businesses shape our community?

Small businesses provide a number of benefits to our communities: they are major employers in our area, a significant catalyst for our economic engine, and they bring the entrepreneurial spirit to our community.

Owners are invested in our community not only from a business perspective, but they are also the lifeblood of local organizations like the Chamber, Rotary, school boards, little league – small businesses are more than just about business, they’re about community.

Exchange Bank also has a strong connection to our community. Can you share a little about that?

Exchange bank was founded on the principle that, as a community bank, we had an obligation to share our time talent, and treasury with the community that supported us. Our long history of support for the educational, non-profit, youth, and seniors of Sonoma County is as important today as it’s ever been.

We are proud of this legacy of community commitment, and it continues to be an important part of our business philosophy. When you do business with Exchange Bank, you allow us to directly benefit the community in which we all live and work.