finance
BY MIKE MORIN
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Claremont Savings Bank
C
Brandy Blackinton, Vice President and Retail Lending Officer, Claremont Savings Bank
laremont Savings Bank is a mutual savings bank founded in 1907. It primarily serves the communities of Claremont, Charlestown, and Cornish, New Hampshire. CSB offers a variety of checking accounts for individuals and businesses, including a free checking account for senior citizens. Also available are savings accounts, certificates of deposit, overdraft protection, direct deposit ATM and debit card services, safe deposit boxes, travelers’ checks, and retirement accounts.
Brandy Blackinton, Vice President and Retail Lending Officer, shares the following information about Claremont Savings Bank.
145 Broad Street Claremont, NH (603) 542-7711 www.claremontsavings.com
112 i m a g e t r e n d w a t c h •
2015
Tell us about your annual CSB Homebuyer Expo. What did potential buyers gain by attending? Our annual Home Expo was held on Saturday, March 14. We had all aspects of buying a home represented at the expo, including realtors, attorneys, insurance agents, builders, energy efficiency companies, and more. Buyers were able to walk around the expo and talk with each vendor about their individual needs. We also had our lenders available to sit down with buyers to discuss the options for financing that Claremont Savings Bank offers. We pre-qualified buyers, and they were even able to apply at the expo! Most importantly, buyers were able to meet and connect with vendors and begin to develop working relationships.
CSB offers a variety of loan programs. How do you match each customer with the right product? This is the fun part! It takes a lot of conversation with the customer and reviewing of their individual scenarios to be able to match their needs with a product. What’s nice about having a variety of loan programs is that we can usually find a product for each customer’s situation. If we find that a customer does not qualify, for whatever reason, we work with them on what they need to do to qualify later on. We build relationships with our customers, even if we can’t assist them immediately. When they are ready, they come back, or when they buy another home, they come back because of the relationships they have built with the bank and their loan officer.
Are there any new banking products on your horizon that might interest home builders and their customers? We introduced a new loan product this past summer that allows us to provide 100 percent financing to customers with a limited or no down payment who meet the qualifications of the program, which are very similar to the qualifications of any mortgage financing. We adjusted our construction loan program this year as well to be a nine-month construction period, and it’s also one step—this means the customer has one closing and one set of closing costs. TW