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Hurricane Katrina

Hit by Katrina, bank gets basic

Whitney Bank, a New Orleans bank with Tampa Bay offices, scattered staff to five states and got cash to customers - even ones who lost purses.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published September 10, 2005

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Once his employer evacuated its New Orleans corporate headquarters, banking executive Biff Motley immediately experienced what would become a common problem for his customers.

No cash.

Upon arrival at the makeshift headquarters in Houston two days ahead of Hurricane Katrina, the Whitney National Bank executive realized his check book was back in New Orleans.

"Fortunately, I have automated bill payment service," said Motley, senior vice president of retail operations for the 122-year-old New Orleans bank. "But in the speed this evacuation happened, an awful lot of our customers forgot purses or lost their checkbooks and debit cards."

Like many major Gulf Coast companies, Whitney pulled the trigger on an elaborate disaster recovery plan the Saturday before Katrina made landfall by moving the bank's operational nerve centers well out of harm's way. Whitney relocated its corporate headquarters near the Superdome to a suburban office complex in Houston. The bank relied on a backup computer in Chicago that kept account records current. It even relocated some back office functions and nine New Orleans appraisers to its regional office 500 miles away in the Tampa Bay area.

But Louisiana's high-tech financial institutions were all forced back to basics because of missing documents, knocked-out telecommunications, destroyed branch banks, waterlogged ATMs and customers who ran out of money.

"We very quickly became a cash society," said Graham Thompson, city executive for the bank in Baton Rouge where customers lined up 200 deep to access money.

"If we can verbally verify you have a Whitney account, you get a check and we'll cash it."

Cash became king as many Louisiana retailers were not accepting credit cards because phone lines to authenticate transactions were knocked out or too overloaded to ring through. Some people bartered for necessities. Postal delays added two days to the time it took some checks to clear.

Whitney re-assigned most of its evacuated front-line bankers from New Orleans to Baton Rouge which overnight doubled in size to become the biggest city in Louisiana. Engorged with evacuees, traffic is a mess. A land rush of home-buying cleared 1,100 homes out of the Multiple Listing Service book in one week.

"I've got one employee who sold his home, but signed 35 backup offers in case the deal falls through," said Graham.

Whitney rallied enough employees to fully staff its 15 branches around Baton Rouge. But customer traffic tripled. Waiting time on call center phones rose from 2 minutes to 15 minutes as telephone service that linked all the branches groaned under overloaded trunk lines and downed phone poles.

The Federal Reserve stocked the flood-stricken region with plenty of cash. Getting your hands on it was the problem.

"Our biggest problems were missing checkbooks or debit cards, accessing account information and tackling the logistics of getting our people to where the needs had shifted," said Motley.

As of Friday, Whitney had opened 108 of its 144 branches, only two of them relying on generator power.

Founded by heirs of a 19th century New Orleans shipping and railroad magnate, Whitney Holding Corp. is an old-line institution that plans to move its headquarters back to the Crescent City. But first the city has to let the bank's staff move back into town. That promises to be months.

With employees rousted from their homes by evacuations, human resources staffers mapped where workers strewn over five states could do their jobs and find housing. Two weeks after they left New Orleans, many only know the condition of their homes by picking up hints from satellite photos of New Orleans neighborhoods that have been posted on the Internet.

A few Whitney employees working at the bank's Tampa Bay headquarters in Palm Harbor spent a few nights with fellow workers here before finding a place they could call their own.

"Some are in hotels; some are getting apartments; others are staying with friends or relatives," said Bob McGivney, Tampa Bay regional president. "At this point they're pretty ragged. Some were on the road all week and they've been working here from 10 a.m. until 1 a.m."

"We have evacuated headquarters for storms before, but we've never dealt with a disaster of this magnitude," he added. "I'm glad we are dispersed over five states."

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified September 10, 2005, 01:22:18]