There was a time when bank regulators counted cash -- by hand

South Sound Bank, a business bank with two branches in Thurston County, will officially become part of Timberland Bank next week after the two agreed to a merger earlier this year.

But longtime South Sound Bank President and Chief Executive Dan Yerrington won’t be around by then. He has retired from the day-to-day operations, although he has joined the board of directors at Timberland Bank.

Yerrington, 72, was born in Chehalis, attended Rochester High School and later graduated from what would become Central Washington University in Ellensburg where he studied management and finance. After school, he went to work for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the early 1970s before going to work for specific banks.

He started at Pacific National Bank, which eventually became part of Wells Fargo. He returned to Thurston County and went to work for South Sound National Bank, which eventually became part of Bank of America. And then he became president of Hood Canal State Bank, which would go on to become First Olympic Bank, Centennial Bank and West Coast Bank before finally becoming part of Columbia Bank.

After Centennial merged with West Coast, Yerrington was part of a group that decided to form South Sound Bank in 1999, and it opened on Jan. 10, 2000.

The Olympian met with Yerrington to ask him a few questions about the banking industry.

Question: What was it like to work for the FDIC, compared to working with them today?

Answer: In the early 1970s, there were no bank problems to speak of, so when we visited a branch, we actually counted cash by hand. This was well before the time of automated teller machines, so a branch would have a number of tellers. We once visited a bank branch in Hawaii that had a line of 40 tellers, and we spent all night counting cash at each window. Now, of course, that counting is all automated. One time I counted a bank teller’s cash five times before she confessed to taking about $240. The system did work, but it was a complete waste of time. Now, the FDIC gets into everything. There’s nothing that a bank does that the FDIC doesn’t have a hand in. And it’s because of the Great Recession when many banks failed. They had to tell banks when it was time to go away and nobody took that news very well.

Q: Why did you want to start South Sound Bank?

A: I met with a lot of friends who weren’t keen on the idea of doing business with a big, out-of-state bank. We felt there was a need for a local bank that could meet a business niche. It turned out there was and it grew pretty fast. (Before the merger with Timberland, South Sound Bank had $175 million in assets).

Q: Why did a merger with Timberland Bank make sense?

A: For one, I’m retiring, and I thought it was time. I also thought if we were going to do this, I wanted to find a partner with a similar business model, as well as the right model for our customers and employees, and Timberland fit the bill in all areas. We’ve had other suitors, if you will, but it just didn’t feel as good as Timberland. (The merger is expected to close Oct. 1.)

Q: What’s the future of retail banking?

A: Well, about 12-13 percent of our customers do everything online. Five years ago that was zero percent. And online banking is going to keep growing. But there will always be a place for a branch bank. If you’re in business, and you want to buy a building, for example, you’re going to want to establish a relationship with a bank.

Q: How healthy is the banking industry?

A: Strength-wise, it’s probably stronger than it has ever been. The banks that survived the Great Recession learned a lot of hard lessons, but they emerged stronger than ever.

This story was originally published September 27, 2018 at 7:03 PM.