After the closing of the Silicon Valley Bank, at least one company in Summerville announced that they would be modifying the method they pay their employees.
The proprietor of Aquatic Analytics, a firm based in Summerville that does water testing, claims that Silicon Valley Bank owns the business that is responsible for calculating the salaries of her employees. Jennifer Girard, one of the laboratory workers, says that even though they received their payment a few hours before the facility closed, it could have been a significant setback.
Girard said, “I’m one of those folks who kind of lives paycheck to paycheck.” [Citation needed] It is possible that some of my bills would not have been paid if the money that was meant to go into the bank on a certain day had not been deposited on that day.
Nonetheless, the shutdown may still end up costing her.
“I just had to check with my bank and see if we’re going to receive costs now for not having the regularly scheduled direct deposit,” Girard added. “I just got to check with my bank and see if we’re going to get fees now.”
As a company owner, Samantha Miller feels that the current crisis has helped her to better understand how linked the global financial system actually is.
Miller said that the situation was “also sort of worrying.” It’s not often that I pay attention to pessimistic forecasts, but this time around, it wasn’t hard at all to bring down a major financial institution.
Nevertheless, Thomas Ruppel, who teaches finance at the College of Charleston, believes that this adjustment shouldn’t be made on a long-term basis.
According to Ruppel, “She’s correct to be concerned about the stability of vendors and suppliers because everyone is,” and he added, “because everyone is.” On the other hand, I don’t believe this will have any impact on the capacity of those vendors and suppliers to continue providing services.
According to Ruppel, the government shutdown caused several significant technology businesses throughout the country to be unable to meet their payroll obligations. On the other hand, South Carolina does not have a very significant population of such.
“Banking is so local here in the Lowcountry that it’s pretty clear that all they have to do is pick up the phone and talk to their banker, and they can figure out that local bank is not in trouble just because of the specialized in the localized situation,” Ruppel said. “It’s pretty clear that all they have to do is pick up the phone and talk to their banker, and they can figure out that that local bank is not in trouble.”
Miller reports that she received word this afternoon that her staff members will not be required to pay any fines for failing to do direct deposits in their paychecks. Miller claims that she is going to continue writing paper checks going ahead in order to ensure that she does not have to deal with another issue in the future.