Wealth and wellness are not interchangeable when it comes to financial wellness. Luis Zapata, Vice President and Financial Education Administrator at 1st Source Bank, says financial wellness is not about how wealthy you are, but rather about what your financial situation is and how you feel about it. If you have minimal financial stress, that is an indicator of a strong financial foundation.
“You don’t need to be rich to be okay with your financial situation. It’s a freedom of choice and security,” Zapata said. “I always give this example: if you wanted ice cream, and you couldn’t buy ice cream, that will make you feel bad and feel broke. But if you can go buy the ice cream, you don’t even think about it—it’s a freedom of choice.”
In fact, financial wellness has been at the heart of what the company does since the beginning.
“Financial wellness is in our DNA. Our mission is to help people achieve security, build wealth, and realize their dreams,” Zapata said.
Assistant Vice President and Banking Center Manager Crystal Cartwright revealed that 1st Source Bank has a financial wellness program in the works titled Enrichment with features in different phases of testing. She noted that the goal after the full launch of Enrichment is to come together as a team, spread the word, and build strong communities and relationships. 1st Source Bank is breaking down the launch between different regions within its reach.
“The Enrichment program is just an expansion of what we are already doing, and it just defines it and puts it all together in a clean process,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright and Zapata both have been involved in guiding people toward financial wellness not just through traditional one-on-one advising, but also through financial wellness presentations. The wealth of knowledge shared through these presentations covers a broad range of topics.
Presentation topics include areas like financial planning, investments, insurance, health savings, and credit reports. The most popular topics are budgeting and identity theft. 1st Source Bank also has a survey to determine personal financial wellness indexes, 50 self-study modules, countless articles, and multiple calculators available on its website to suit both consumer and commercial interests.
“We have these resources available at no cost to anybody,” Zapata said. “At our library presentations, anybody is welcome. We first help the communities that we serve and then we make them stronger. In the long run, we’re going to be a stronger bank because of what we do for our communities.”
Having this level of accessibility is central to 1st Source Bank’s mission, and it allows them to build and grow relationships within their communities.
“We’ve built some really strong relationships with people in the community that have no bank account with us,” Cartwright said. “I have some really good connections in our county that don’t bank with us personally, but you better believe when they run into somebody that needs financial advice, they send them my way. We’ve built a great referral basis; they consider 1st Source Bank the go-to in many of our communities.”
For more information about 1st Source Bank and financial wellness, visit their website at www.1stsource.com/.
