CHAIRMAN'S CORNER - DENNIS E. NIXON

Silicon Valley Bank catered primarily to tech companies and Signature Bank catered primarily to crypto depositors. These banks did not have a diversified deposit base like most mainstream community banks that are serving thousands of communities across America. Many rumors have surrounded these collapses and caused anxiety among depositors of other banks across the country. Much of the concern revolves around the early announcement that many customers of these two banks had uninsured deposits, which were potentially subject to being lost as a result of the banks' failure. Those fears have now been resolved because the US Treasury and FDIC have confirmed that all those depositors will be fully protected and made whole, and that the nation's banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation. The Federal Reserve Bank has also taken steps to provide liquidity lending to support eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.

As a loyal IBC customer, you may have concerns because we are in a period where difficult issues are being faced everyday with inflation and rising interest rates.  IBC is a community bank serving 75 communities across Texas and Oklahoma. This means we have deposit customers and provide lending services in all those cities and towns. We have a very diversified deposit base with hundreds of thousands of customers, which gives us great confidence in our relationship deposit base that we have grown over our 57 years of successful operations. Let me assure you, IBC has prospered and continued to grow because we put our customers first knowing that we have a deep responsibility first and foremost to protect your money.  We take that responsibility very seriously every single day.  We just released our year-end 2022 financial information which is available on our website, www.ibc.com and it clearly shows that 2022 was the very best year in IBC's history. If you take a moment to look at those reports, I believe you will quickly see that your bank, IBC, has set the gold standard for defining a high-quality community bank.  As I said when we released our year-end earnings, "In addition to our stellar performance, we are confident in our exceptionally strong capital position, significant liquidity, strong relationship deposit base, and management strategies to position us for continued success." Those comments absolutely reflect our views today as well.  

Finally, as with any crisis, our staff is here to talk or meet to understand and respond to any of your special issues.  Always know, we are here to "do more."