Bank of America’s Sharon Miller on Savannah Growth | Blessings in a Book Bag | AI Updates for Small Business

I've got this work in theory that I want you to comment on that people seem to be waiting and hoping the interest rates would drop and they were kind of holding off on investments.

And it feels to me like people have kind of figured out and don't feel like they're going to drop.

anytime soon.

And so that kind of latent demand, it feels to me like is loosening up.

Does that

what you

guys are seeing?

Yes, it is.

And we don't expect interest rates to decline further as a bank.

So our economist was with us last night here in Savannah.

She's based in Savannah and was just on CNBC yesterday morning and then came to our dinner last night and talked about what she had spoken about in the national audience.

Look, we expect interest rates to probably rise a bit and we are at historically low rates.

So Some people don't understand that, but we are in a good time right now in this interest rate cycle.

Yeah, that's really interesting, you know, because I'm 52.

I didn't pay attention to interest rates, you know, years ago, but we've gotten used to that low interest rate environment.

3%, right?

Historically.

Right.

and probably not going to return, right? And so while it feels high, it actually, when you look at historic trends, pretty reasonable.

And the uncertainty about the future, you just don't know, right? And so I think it feels to us like we're talking to a lot of our members that are making the leap and really deciding that if they're going to take advantage of this growth, they've got to be in growth mode themselves.

Right, especially in Savannah.

I mean, what's happening now, and I heard it in the lunch today, look, we are at a time where we are just on the precipice of really getting to where we need to be, and to be making investments today is going to be well worthwhile.

Let's talk about your strategy in terms of, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of folks are doing online banking.