FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 61

The 1982 annual report confirmed what everyone was
experiencing: commodity prices were low and with expenses going up
because of inflation, most association members were feeling a cashflow squeeze. In other words, times were tough. The association was
doing everything possible to help, including cutting costs themselves
in order to provide member-borrowers with funds at the lowest
possible cost. Of every expense dollar, 96.4 cents went to interest paid
on borrowed funds. Facility expenses were .2 cents of every dollar, as
was travel; salaries and benefits represented only 2.3 cents per dollar.
All remaining expenses totaled only .9 cents
per dollar.

A Pricey Calculation

One aspect of the associations’
operations appeared to be moving
forward—technology. Since 1960 the
Intermediate Credit Banks had been
handling the data processing for banks
and associations. Offices in Columbia,
Louisville, St. Paul, Springfield, and
Wichita stored data by which various
credit and management decisions were
made. They scored loans automatically,
eliminating much of the credit
examination process for local bank and
association offices. But before computers
arrived on the scene, processing loans
was a tedious hands-on task that remains
fresh in the memories of FCS Financial
employees.

The January/February 1981 issue of Farming
magazine ran an article featuring a “programmable
calculator.” More expensive than a pocket calculator
but less than a microcomputer, it cost around $500.
Though it didn’t store data like a computer, it was
“capable of solving complicated mathematical and
investment problems with ease.” The calculation
was stored on a magnetic card “which can be fed
into the calculator when desired.”
The microcomputer, now commonly known
as a PC, cost around $3,000 at the time. The
only alternative was the remote terminal which
was used in the farm office to gain access to a
centralized computer, usually associated with a
university, via a phone line. Terminals cost between
$1,000 and $3,000 and work done by the central
computer was printed on paper or displayed on a
“TV-like screen by the terminal.”

Donna Copenhaver, financial services specialist in the Macon
office, started with Farm Credit at the end of 1977 in the Shelbina
office. “Everything was done manually,” she recalled. “We had
a phone, a manual typewriter; we used carbon paper and wrote
everything down by hand.” If someone came in to make a payment,
they filled out a receipt. Loan requests that were above their authority
level were sent to their main office in Hannibal. Donna Patterson
who later oversaw the development of CRM (customer relationship

The Perfect Storm

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