Mr. Smith: Fulton Financial Corporation is a holding company that owns community banks in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia. Over our 27-year history, we have acquired 22 banks and various other smaller companies. We now own eight community banks in our five-state footprint. Each of those banks operates under a locally recognized name to maintain the community bank image and deliver the personalized service traditionally associated with a community bank. Under this banking model, our customers can benefit from the strength, products and services of our 16.9 billion holding company while providing the individualized service and local community decision-making of a community bank. We think that's a very good position for us to be in. Fulton Financial, like others in our industry, has had its share of challenges over the last couple of years as we have worked our way through this economic situation. However, we are confident in our strong capital base and in our ability to work through these difficulties, and emerge as a strong player when the economy recovers
TWST: What are the key factors that differentiate Fulton from its competition, is it your business focus, geography, quality of assets? What might those factors be?
Mr. Smith: The most important factor for us is customer service. Our pricing is competitive, but we very seldom lead with pricing. What we try to do is provide the extraordinary customer service that is expected of community banks, and do it better than our competitors. We train and support our employees on how to deliver a superior customer experience, and we measure our efforts to continually improve. We are very confident in our ability to differentiate ourselves through our service and through the positive experiences we create for our customers. As you can imagine, this strengthens our reputation and helps us receive considerable word-of-mouth referrals from customers. Our entire team is focused on customer service - caring about our customers, listening to understand their unique needs, and delivering the best combination of products and services that ensure their experience with us is a positive, memorable one.
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