Banking New England Nov/Dec 2016

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

INSIDE: HOW TO GET HIGH ROI FROM YOUR ANALYTICS INVESTMENT

NEW ENGLAND

THE RESOURCE FOR NEW ENGLAND’S FINANCIAL LEADERS

Banks

Struggle with CFPB Requirements Technical Interpretations of Regulations Causing Headaches

A PUB LICAT IO N O F TH E WA R RE N G R O U P

A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E WAR R EN G R O U P

CONTENTS

NEW ENGLAND

THE RESOURCE FOR NEW ENGLAND’S FINANCIAL LEADERS

04

08

NAVIGATING MUNICIPAL BOARDS

Invest the Time to Do Your Homework

BIG DATA, BIG RETURNS

How to Get High ROI from Your Analytics Investment

12

BANK PROFILE

10 14

18

20

22

24

16

Franklin Savings Bank Is Branching Out

INDUSTRY NEWS

Banks

Struggle with CFPB Requirements Technical Interpretations of Regulations Causing Headaches

MBA CONVENTION

CFPB Director Addresses Packed Crowd at MBA Convention in Boston

HELP CLIENTS HELP THEMSELVES

Banks Can Protect Small Business Clients from Cybersecurity Threat

WORKFORCE TRANSFORMATION

Three Essential Ideas to Help Solve the Bank Talent Crisis

ANOTHER REGULATORY HURDLE

Mortgage Lenders Brace for Implementation of New HMDA Requirements

FRESH PERSPECTIVE

Former Boston Private CEO Leading Acquisition of Admirals Bank

28

COMMUNITY GOOD WORKS

TWG STAFF CEO & PUBLISHER Timothy M. Warren Jr. PRESIDENT David B. Lovins

www.thewarrengroup.com

©2016 The Warren Group Inc. All rights reserved. The Warren Group is a trademark of The Warren Group Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Advertising, editorial and production inquiries should be directed to: The

26

PERSONNEL FILE

30

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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3

PROTECTINGMUNICIPAL NAVIGATING VULNERABLE BOARDS CLIENTS

Invest the Time to Do Your Homework Barry R. Crimmins is an attorney in Stoughton, Massachusetts, who has specialized in zoning and land use regulations, as well as elder and estate law, for 30 years.

For more information visit his website at www.brc-law.com.

Barry R. Crimmins

4

BANKING NEW ENGLAND

BY BARRY R. CRIMMINS

N

ew Englanders take their town government very seriously. From the so-called “Open Town Meeting” format of government, where residents can vote regulations “up or down,” to the local officials who oversee and enforce these regulations, local town government has sometimes been characterized as “the purest form of democracy.”

Each municipality throughout the region has its own elected and appointed officials who oversee the governing of their respective communities.

These gatekeepers, many of whom are volunteers or at the most receive a meager stipend for their community service, are tasked with charting and shaping the growth of their towns and, as such, are the people who approve (or do not approve) requests for new construction or expansion on the part of a business or institution.

To the applicants, this “purest form of democracy” can sometimes seem very time-consuming, frustrating and daunting. However, in working your way through the permitting process, knowledge is power. And knowing how to navigate through this municipal process can save you a great deal of anxiety, and maybe a few headaches, along the way.

Let’s suppose that you, as the CEO of a community bank, have secured the support of your board of directors for the bank’s plan to build a new location in a nearby community. Now comes the next step – and it’s on to the community officials to get started.

While you, the bank officials and the board view this as a great benefit for your institution and

the community, that point of view may require a bit of persuasion on your part when it comes to the local officials.

You should start with the understanding that each community differs somewhat in its zoning and planning regulations. What may fall under existing regulations in one community may require a special permit in another. The process which takes an idea from concept to (hopefully) final approval may not look exactly the same from community to community, but there are common guidelines every banker should follow in attempting to navigate a remodeling or new construction process.

It will pay huge dividends to do your homework in advance. When planning an expansion project, become familiar with who the key players and decision-makers are in each community. One quick way to learn this is through the community’s website. Whether that’s Stoughton, Massachusetts, Bennington, Vermont, Stonington, Connecticut or Bristol, Rhode Island, most communities have a website which lists their departments and elected/appointed officials.

Knowing the players is important. Knowing which boards or departments you will need to appear before is also important. You should become thoroughly familiar with the community’s zoning and planning bylaws. Your architect, engineer or attorney (or all three) may be able to help here with some specific information about the community.

Begin by seeking meetings with the appropriate CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

community officials. This most likely begins with the community’s building inspector, engineer and planner to review the plans for the project. The project architect, engineer and attorney should attend these meetings whenever possible. Prior to submitting an application for such a project, you should determine the answers to the following questions: 1. Is this proposed project an already permitted use? In other words, does the proposed expansion conform to existing zoning bylaws?

2. If not, and it requires a special permit, what is the procedure for doing so?

3. In turn, which municipal boards, and in what order, should review the necessary applications?

Only when those questions have been answered should the formal applications be submitted to the appropriate municipal boards. When the formal application process gets underway, the hearings will most likely be held before a number of boards, with meetings open to the public. Open Meeting laws, as well as most state statutes and local bylaws, require that municipal board meetings are generally open to the public, which means that the boards could theoretically field questions from citizens, including abutters and other interested parties, as well as from the local media.

However, before you get to the formal hearing process, it may be advantageous to seek a preliminary meeting with the boards, if this is something that the boards allow. In this somewhat less formal

setting, you can introduce yourself and your plan and seek the input from the board members as to what you might do to make the project appealing to the town.

When you begin, provide a detailed set of plans that shows your proposed work in a thorough and professional manner. Engineering or architectural plans are preferable. Sketches don’t really impress municipal officials and should be avoided.

In dealing with municipal board members, become familiar with what they expect, and what they like and require. It’s possible that a pet peeve of the chairman of the Planning Board is applicants who do not show detailed landscaping plans, for example. That may not be a deal-killer but it could end up requiring additional time, and as they say, time is money.

Be aware that even affirmative votes by individual boards are generally subject to a waiting period while abutters and other “aggrieved parties” have the chance to appeal the board’s decision. The seemingly slow pace at which governmental approval can proceed can be frustrating to an applicant. But from the community’s point of view, they’re trying to look out for the safety and wellbeing of the town they are elected or appointed to represent.

Be prepared, be patient and be thorough – and if you do your homework and follow the steps, hopefully you will open your new bank branch with the blessings and good wishes of the community where it will be located, and in a timely fashion. BNE

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PROTECTING BIG DATA, BIGVULNERABLE RETURNS CLIENTS

How to Get High ROI From Your Analytics Investment

BY SCOTT MCCLYMONDS

Scott McClymonds of CEO Velocity coaching and consulting specializes in building analytics and management systems that help banks acquire and retain profitable customers.

His focus on creating value for customers helps banks stay competitive and relevant while building profitability and brand strength. He can be reached at (479) 263-0774 or scottm@ceovelocity.com.

Scott McClymonds

A

community bank recently asked me about calculating ROI on analytics. They are considering making an investment and wanted to know what financial returns they could expect. I hope to convince you that a relatively modest investment in analytics will yield significant returns to customers, employees and shareholders.

Before we dive in, let me give you just a bit of background. Before starting CEO Velocity I spent my career in the field of analytics, first with Bank One on the retail, small business and private banking sides; then with Signet Bank in commercial; and finally leading analytics for $16 billion Walton-owned Arvest Bank.

Without a doubt, using analytics can make banks much more profitable, but it starts with leadership. If you don’t have an executive who is convinced that knowing more about your customers, products and markets is important to thrive and grow, don’t even contemplate analytics.

Keep doing what you’re doing, and eventually sell for the highest multiple you can.

Why say that? After seeing analytics generate high returns for banks for over 25 years, it’s clear that the superior understanding of customers and markets afforded by analytics creates a differentiated brand leading to customer loyalty, employee satisfaction and financial growth. Not investing in analytics is a vote to ignore changing customer needs and, as I see it, that eventually leads to obsolescence and “out of business.”

Analytics Is About People

Typically finance and loan committees are heavy analytics users as they examine credit quality, interest rate risk and the bank’s asset and liability mix. Analytics is not as well used in areas such as retail, small business, C&I and mortgage.

At its core, analytics is about people – your customers and your market place. Analytics shows you how they behave, spots trends in things like channel usage, product purchases and fee income.

It analytics lets you categorize your customers according to profitability so you can build strategies around each level of customer profitability in your bank.

Banks that get a high return on their analytics investment use it for far more than cross-selling.

While that is important, the strategic benefits 8

BANKING NEW ENGLAND

community banks realize with analytics go far beyond cross-selling, CRM usage or one-time marketing campaigns.

Analytics Leads to Better Strategy

If you believe the bank that best meets the needs of its customers wins, then you will be open to the improved innovation and strategy analytics brings. You will adopt a management model similar to the one below, which is informed at every level by analytics. I call it the “8 Pillars of Strategic Alignment.” It focuses on satisfying various customer segments within the context of the bank’s culture and mission. It uses analytics to derive optimal customer experiences, designs execution around those needs, measures performance and uses results to further innovate.

In this sense analytics is far more than a simple cross-selling program or a way to assess credit quality. While those latter functions are important, the opportunity to create significantly better customer and market strategies based on profitability, trends and behaviors goes far beyond the traditional thinking on analytics, and in reality can mean thriving as a bank or being an also-ran.

Turning $100K into $4.9 Million If you believe community banks can win by using analytics-based strategies to build and manage relationships with your most profitable customer tiers, you will use a strategic framework like the one outlined above to create a strategy based on a knowledge of your customer’s needs, and the example below reflects results you could see in an ROI calculation.

In our example our most profitable customers earn us, on average, $10,000 per year. The next lower profit group earns us on average $2,500 annually. There are 2,000 high-profit, “End Zone customers,” and 2,000 customers in the second profit group, which I call “Red Zone.” That’s $20 million in profit from your End Zone customers, and $5 million from your “Red Zone” group.

Your employees know a fraction of your End Zone customers, but not the majority, and you need a relationship management strategy designed for them that will: 1. Monitor their ongoing banking needs and cross-sell them into additional products;

The 8 Pillars of Strategic Alignment

Know Who You Are

Strategy

Innovate

Customer Needs

Measure

Customer Experience Focused Execution

2. Solidify relationships that may be weak, such as those who only have a commercial loan; 3. Systematically generate referrals from them.

What if by monitoring these 2,000 End Zone relationships closely you were able to: 1. Sell additional services to 400 of them, and increase their profitability by $1,000 each. That’s an additional $400,000 in profitability.

2. Cross-sell 200 weak relationships into multiservice ones, not gaining any additional profitability, but saving $2 million from walking out the door.

3. Gain 100 new similar clients through a systematic referral program, realizing an additional $1 million in profitability.

All in all, by creating a more strategic focus on your most profitable customers (your top 10 percent), our little scenario has gained you an additional $3.4 million in profitability.

Communicate

We haven’t even begun talking about migrating Red Zone customers to the End Zone. What if we could migrate 10 percent of our $2,500 annual Red Zone customers to $10,000 End Zone ones using analytics?

That’s incremental profit of 200 x $7,500, or $1.5 million.

In our scenarios we have used analytics within the framework of customer portfolio management to focus on the top 20 percent of our customer base and have realized incremental profitability of $4.9 million.

What did we spend? My team and I would charge roughly $100,000 to $150,000 in year one, and $60,000 each year thereafter. Would you spend $100,000 to $150,000 to earn $4.9 million?

My annual budget at Arvest was about $1 million fully loaded with salaries, spread over 16 community banks, or about $62,500 per bank, so the numbers are very comparable.

Your numbers might be very different depending on the size of your bank, the number and type of customers you have

and their profitability. However, the results described above are directional if you focus your analytics investment on a strategy based on customer portfolio management instead of a general cross-sell one.

Your large bank competitors are doing this, but community banks can also take advantage of these analytical tools. If you combine customer analytics with your community bank culture and ties, it spells competitive advantage for you, but as I mentioned at the beginning, you must have a C-level leadership champion, a strong analytics partner and a willingness to change to the evolving needs of your customer base.

In this article we have looked at the ROI of analytics from the standpoint of creating better strategy as well as using customer portfolio management as a focused way to get strong paybacks with analytics. If you go into analytics with the best interests of the customer in mind and a willingness to make changes, your analytics payback will be very high indeed. BNE BANKING NEW ENGLAND

9

PROTECTING INDUSTRY NEWS VULNERABLE CLIENTS

Lopez First Latino Elected to Serve as MBA Chairman Rodrigo Lopez recently made history as the first Latino elected to serve as chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).

Rodrigo Lopez Lopez was sworn in as the 2017 chairman during the MBA Annual Convention and Expo opening ceremony in Boston. An active member of the MBA for 30 years, Lopez has the experience necessary to lead an organization which represents over 2,200 member companies throughout the real estate finance industry.

As the most recent chairman of MBA’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Lopez worked to advocate for underrepresented facets of the population in order to foster inclusiveness, creativity and economic growth within the industry.

His appointment comes at a time when Hispanics are poised to add as many as 5.7 million additional homeowners over the next decade. Homeownership among Latinos has been growing while homeownership among the general population continues a 12-year decline. According to the 2015 State of Hispanic Homeownership Report from the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), Hispanic families represent 52 percent of new households over the last 15 years. The primary barrier to Hispanic homeownership growth has and continues to be access to affordable mortgage credit.

During his swearing in, Lopez pledged to uphold the MBA’s mission to promote fair, responsible and sustainable mortgage practices through both education and advocacy, for the benefit of industry professionals and the families whom they represent.

Berkshire Bank Receives National Recognition for Volunteer Participation The American Bankers Association recently recognized Berkshire Bank for its corporate volunteer efforts through the Community Commitment Awards program.

The annual program honors banks for their work in the community in categories ranging from affordable housing to volunteerism. The selection committee, made up of national experts in each category, chose recipients based on the creativity and thoughtfulness of the bank program. Each program had to embody the ideals of corporate 10 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

social responsibility and demonstrate success in measurable terms.

Berkshire Bank received recognition for its Xtraordinary Day which took place this summer.

The bank closed its retail locations and operations centers to give all employees an opportunity to volunteer in the communities they serve. The bank employees completed 56 group service projects, selected and planned by local employees.

Approximately 95 percent of Berkshire’s employees participated in the day of service.

With almost all of Berkshire Bank’s employees having participated in the program in 2016, the rate puts Berkshire Bank on track to achieve the highest volunteer participation rate of any company in the U.S., according to a statement from the bank.

ABA Report: New Credit Cards Hit Post-Recession Highs, but Consumers Diligent with Debt The number of new credit card accounts and monthly purchase volumes continued to expand this year, according to the American Bankers Association’s latest Credit Card Market Monitor.

The ABA’s November report, which reflected credit card data from April through June, showed that monthly purchase volumes rose 5.1 percent for subprime accounts and 8.3 percent for super-prime accounts. The report also indicated that the number of new credit card accounts increased 84.9 million during that period, or 11 percent, from the same period in 2015.

“Consumer spending was strong in the second quarter, driven in part by an improving labor market and steadily rising wages,” Jess Sharp, executive director of the ABA’s card policy council, said in a statement. “As consumers continue to gravitate toward credit cards, it’s no surprise that purchase volumes and account openings are on the rise.”

The ABA concluded from its report that even though credit card usage is increasing, consumers are not overleveraging themselves. The ABA said the share of transactor accounts, or those who pay off their balances in full each month, rose 0.7 percent to 29.5 percent of all accounts and that credit card credit relative to real disposable income totaled 5.23 percent, in line with post-recession lows. Further, the association said that while the number of new accounts rose to a post-recession high of 84.9 million, just 20 percent of those were subprime accounts, compared with 28 percent in early 2009.

Additionally, the average credit line for a subprime account has risen slowly, or 7 percent, over the last three years, and remains 25 percent below postrecession levels. BNE

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PROTECTING BANK PROFILEVULNERABLE CLIENTS

Franklin Savings Bank Is Branching Out

The passage of the Dodd-Frank Act has made residential lending “very prescribed, difficult, and less profitable to do well. I can’t ever envision a time we won’t do residential lending, but it’s not the focus it once was.”

Ronald Magoon President Franklin Savings Bank

12 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

BY LINDA GOODSPEED

N

ew logo, new tagline, new website, new branch, new president – Franklin Savings Bank, one of the oldest mutually owned community banks in New Hampshire is quite literally on the move.

For most of its history, FSB, founded in 1869, has been a reliable member of the central lakes region of New Hampshire. Over the years, the bank has steadily grown total assets to $435 million and its footprint to seven branches.

The bank’s hometown of Franklin (population 8,500) has been on a different trajectory. Like many old New England mill towns, Franklin fell into disrepair when the mills left. But the town may be turning around thanks to a concerted revitalization effort, helped in part by FSB, which is providing $12 million in financing to redevelop one of the old mill buildings into 45 units of workforce housing. The region’s economy is largely reliant on tourism, some small manufacturing and professional services, and is home to a surprising number of community banks.

Franklin’s new president, Ronald L. Magoon, is one of the region’s biggest community bank champions. Magoon has spent 28 of his 30-year

banking career at Franklin, arriving in 1988 as controller. He takes the helm from longtime president Jeffery B. Savage, who will retire at the end of 2016.

“I love being a community banker,” Magoon said. “I love coming to work every day and seeing the impact this organization has on customers and communities. I really believe if our branches were replaced by [a big bank], they would be just a branch. They would not have the same interest in our customers and communities.”

And barely the same access to technology.

In recent years FSB has invested heavily in technology, and today its customers have access to many of the same services as large bank customers, including mobile banking, remote check deposit and bill pay, and it is the only bank in the area (other than Bank of America) to offer online appointments. All of which is why Franklin thought it was time to modernize its brand to reflect its technology evolution. It even contemplated changing its name. But after interviewing customers and staff, FSB decided to keep its name, but update its image.

“There was no compelling reason to change

our name. But we felt it was important for our brand and image to reflect our focus and investment in technology and customer education,” said Dawn Beers, marketing officer, who spearheaded the re-branding effort.

In addition to rolling out its new logo and tagline (“Smarter Banking, Easier Living”) in September, FSB also launched a new, more secure website. But the changes don’t stop there. Early in 2017, Franklin will open its first new branch in nearly a decade, and also its first outside central New Hampshire, when it opens a branch in Merrimack in the southern part of the state.

“Normally in the past, we would have branched into a contiguous market,” Magoon said. “But central New Hampshire, it’s very rural, not much population density. You need a lot of market share. In a more populous area, you can create a profitable branch with much lower market share.”

FSB will also be the only community bank in Merrimack. Other branches are located in Bristol, Boscawen, Tilton, Laconia and Gilford. It also has a business lending office in Bedford.

Diversification Pays Off Commercial lending is a growing focus at Franklin, and now comprises slightly over half its total $318 million loan portfolio.

“We see commercial lending as an opportunity to develop deep relationships with the owner and also employees,” Magoon said.

He added that the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act has made

residential lending “very prescribed, difficult, and less profitable to do well. I can’t ever envision a time we won’t do residential lending, but it’s not the focus it once was.”

Another growing focus is investment management services. FSB offers investment, insurance and financial planning services through its wholly owned subsidiary, Independence Financial Advisors, from offices in Franklin, Bedford, Nashua and Rochester.

“We see it as a way of rounding out our services to customers,” Magoon said. “We found a real need for organizations to provide a significant breadth of services and products and also education.

We do a lot of seminars and teach classes on estate planning, college planning, retirement planning. Education is a real focus.

The educated customer is a more loyal customer and better decision maker.”

Income from its investment management subsidiary is also noninterest income and helps diversify the bank’s revenue stream.

Going forward, Magoon sees several challenges on the horizon – recruiting and maintaining employees, an uncertain regulatory environment, and maintaining strong customer relationships in the digital age.

“If customers’ only touchpoint is through technology, you want great technology, but the other thing so important is having these relationships,” he said. “Maintaining personal relationships is more and more difficult as more technology enters the equation. It’s a challenge we’re all facing.” BNE

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PROTECTING MBA CONVENTION VULNERABLE CLIENTS

CFPB Director Addresses Packed Crowd at MBA Convention in Boston

BY JIM MORRISON

Jim Morrison is a staff writer for The Warren Group, publisher of Banking New England.

14 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

R

ichard Cordray, director of the lately embattled Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, addressed a hall packed with mortgage bankers at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston on Oct. 25.

The audience was not given the opportunity to respond to Cordray or ask questions.

In his speech, Cordray said his office and MBA members have “each been working in our own ways to revive a mortgage industry that was devastated by the financial crisis.”

He outlined the mortgage crisis and the slow, uneven and nearly complete recovery, but also took note of lingering issues.

“I agree with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt that the market is not yet supporting access to credit for the full spectrum of creditworthy borrowers; average credit scores for home purchase loans are still above the levels historically viewed as normal from past years,” he said.

Cordray said the lending industry has improved and that the CFPB played a large role in that improvement.

“We know that sometimes you are focused only on one side of the equation, namely the compliance costs you have incurred in implementing the rules we issued,” he said. “That is a fact, but it is an inevitable one. No economic sector that precipitates a global financial meltdown could possibly expect to escape far-reaching reforms, as the Congress so dictated.”

He spoke at length about the TRID “Know Before You Owe” rule and its successful first year in effect; the feedback his office has received on the rule has been largely positive. The CFPB will continue to solicit input for improvement from the lending industry with regard to both TRID and the new HMDA reporting requirements.

“We recognize this [the expanded HMDA reporting requirements] means yet another implementation process for mortgage lenders, so we set a generous lead time to implement the rule,” he said. “For most of it, the effective date is January 2018, which means the first submission of new data is not due to the bureau until March 2019.”

Cordray put off addressing the biggest of the elephants in the room, PHH’s successful suit vacating the $103 million fine against it and the finding that the very structure of the CFPB is unconstitutional, until the end of his address. He acknowledged the loss, saying “The case is not final at this point; the bureau has made clear that it respectfully disagrees with the panel’s decision and is considering its options for seeking further review.”

Cordray also said the agency would continue to apply RESPA as it has done in the past. BNE

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A FRAUGHT RELATIONSHIP

Banks

Struggle with CFPB Requirements Technical Interpretations of Regulations Causing Headaches

16 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

BY LAURA ALIX

A

s one of the most heavily regulated industries in America, it’s natural that bankers and regulators might not always have the happiest of relationships, but a new Aite Group report aims to shed some light on how banks’ relationship with the new cop on the beat may be a little more fraught than others.

Senior Analyst Shirley Inscoe’s paper, “CFPB: Impact on Financial Institution Fraud Departments,” highlights a few key areas of difference between the CFPB and other banking regulators. Bankers she interviewed for the report told her that CFPB examiners seemed to spend as much time working offsite as they did onsite, that the bureau required much more data than other regulators and that the examination process was generally less transparent and communicative than those of other regulators.

Inscoe wants to be clear that she’s not bashing the CFPB in her report.

“I didn’t want this report to be anti-CFPB,” she said. “They have a role to play and while there can be philosophical differences, it’s an important role.”

But as a former compliance manager herself, Inscoe thinks that banks, consumers and regulators all benefit when bankers enjoy open and collaborative relationships with their regulators.

“I know personally when I was in that role I had a very close dialogue with the OCC,” she said. “We talked regularly, and if I had questions, I felt comfortable going to them and talking to them and making sure we were abiding by the spirit of the regulation and not just the letter of the law.”

Chris Cole, executive vice president and senior regulatory counsel at the Independent Community Bankers of America, said that he’s heard similar complaints about the bureau and commented that many community banks intentionally stay below the $10 billion asset threshold so as to avoid direct examination by the CFPB. Of course, while banks under $10 billion aren’t directly regulated by the CFPB, the bureau does write the rules for everybody, and smaller banks do watch what the bureau is doing. Those who work with community banks say it’s not uncommon for banks of all sizes to cultivate happy and healthy relationships with their respective regulators.

“I have several clients who have a collaborative relationship with regulatory agencies and are in touch with them other than those times when they’re being formally examined. They’re being proactive in keeping them informed,” said Kenneth Ehrlich, a partner at Bostonbased Nutter McLennan & Fish and co-chair of the firm’s banking and financial services practice.

In Ehrlich’s work with banks under $10 billion in assets, he said that complaints about technical interpretations of various consumer

compliance regulations are far more common over the past few years than issues with the CFPB more generally.

A Holistic Approach to Compliance

While Stephen King, a member of Boston-based Wolf & Co. and director of the firm’s regulatory compliance services, works with banks that are not directly subject to CFPB examinations, he still described some recent trends in the world of bank compliance. In particular, he noted an increasing demand for expertise in specific compliance areas as banks embed compliance staff into each of their business units.

“What that’s translating to is a lot of institutions are beefing up compliance staffing in key compliance areas, like residential lending, BSA, even in commercial lending,” he said. “It’s not a compliance person from the compliance department, but it’s someone whose sole job is to analyze that department’s compliance.”

He also described a shift in the industry toward a “three lines of defense” approach to compliance. It helps to picture this in terms of three concentric circles. The first line of defense is the compliance staff embedded within individual business units, testing processes and procedures within that specific division. The second line of defense, general compliance staff, broaden that focus a little bit and validate and test the work of the first line of defense. The third line of defense, King said, is the audit functionality, which takes a holistic look at both the individual business units and the compliance department.

King also said the industry has undergone a philosophical shift in its approach to compliance, moving from a bottom-up approach to a top-down approach.

“In the past it was all about, ‘What do we need to pass?’” he said.

“What banks are doing now with [enterprise risk management] is analyzing, ‘What are we doing and why are we doing this?’ The exam now is almost catching up with that: you’re doing this to run a more effective and more efficient bank. We want to run a more effective and more efficient exam.”

More broadly, Ehrlich has a suggestion for bankers looking to survive a regulatory exam: “No. 1, run a good bank,” he said.

“Run a good ship. Be transparent. Be cooperative, professional and reasonable, and it’s unlikely you’ll have any trouble.”

That doesn’t mean that even the best-behaved banks haven’t occasionally encountered an examiner with an apparent axe to grind, but Ehrlich said this is fortunately rare.

“That’s unfortunate, but it can happen even to the best prepared bank,” he said. “The world’s not a perfect place, so occasionally, you will get some strange treatment from an examination team, but it’s pretty rare.” BNE

Laura Alix is a staff writer for The Warren Group, publisher of Banking New England.

BANKING NEW ENGLAND

17

HELP CLIENTS HELP THEMSELVES

Banks Can Protect Small Business Clients from Cybersecurity Threat

BY AL ALPER

Al Alper is CEO and founder of Absolute Logic (www.absolutelogic.com).

He may be reached at al.alper@absolutelogic.com or (855) 255-1550.

Al Alper

18 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

T

he relationship between a small business and its bank is mutually beneficial. While the business is dependent on the bank for enhancing buying power, making payroll and funding innovation, banks invest in the success of their commercial clients. As such, banks are in a great position to advise small businesses. And given that mistakes in cybersecurity can cost businesses – and as a result, the banks behind those businesses – lots of money, it only makes sense that banks should be at the forefront of offering information on this potentially devastating shortcoming.

Cybercrime is a lucrative business – so much so that it’s been classified a “top global risk” by the World Economic Forum. Hackers can make about $190 for selling a bank account login with at least a $2,000 balance on the “Dark Web” or “DarkNet;” fullzinfo on high-balance credit or debit cards can earn cybercriminals close to $1,200. On a smaller scale, credit card magnetic details can fetch $30, and Facebook account logins ($3), Twitter account logins ($0.60) and Uber account logins ($4) all add up too.

But the biggest money maker for cybercriminals: ransomware, which can net $7,500 per month, per hacker. All told, the economics of cybercrime is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2019 – an enticing gold mine too lucrative to pass up, spawning even more criminals.

Last year alone, some 430 million malware attacks were launched against businesses – with some 82,000 new malware threats released each day!

Lloyd’s estimated that in 2015 cyberattacks cost companies and businesses about $400 billion; of these cyberattacks, half of them targeted firms with less than 250 employees.

While many small businesses falsely believe “we are too small to hack,” banks are in a great position to help their clients understand that is untrue. So, what should banks be telling these small businesses? Focus on what they can do, what they need, where they should start and what should they expect it to cost.

The single biggest security threat to small businesses is complacency. “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive,” Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, once said. This may seem extreme, but businesses that think they have cybersecurity covered because they have the latest antivirus software and firewall protection are sitting ducks for cybercriminals.

One of the best ways to improve a small business’s cybersecurity posture is through a layered approach.

Start with the Internet, move on to the organization’s perimeter, then to the company’s network and finally focus on the end user. Internet protection tools include spam filtering, web filtering and content control; these efforts range in cost from $0.75 to $3.25 per month, per user – a virtual no-brainer!

Perimeter protection, such as a unified threat management integrated firewall, is a bit more expensive, at $700 to $1,500 as an entry point, but still incredibly cost-effective compared with the possible alternative.

At the company network level, businesses should implement password and application control policies (which are included with most managed provider plans). Additionally, all technology should be constantly backed up and tested – again, the costs associated with these efforts are typically included as part of a managed provider plan.

Finally, businesses should work to stay protected at the end user level by spelling out acceptable use policies and privacy policies within the employee manual. Counsel should review any policy to ensure that the business, the clients, and the team are all protected.

Again, many managed provider plans will offer assistance with this. Providing constant education for employees is also critical to ensure that they can spot – and stay away from – cyberdanger.

There are a few immediate recommendations banks can encourage their clients to do right away to make sure their clients are staying cybersafe. For starters, encourage businesses to require longer, more complex passwords. This may not seem like it would make a big difference, but consider the following passwords and estimated time for a hacker to break through:

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Our Last name is 15 octillion years Lawson Furthermore, businesses should be encouraged to institute policies and plans that promote a secure environment. Requirements such as 45-day password rotation, 10-minute screen savers, individual logins and ACLs (access control), as well as ensuring backup and disaster recovery planning are all quick steps that provide exponential benefits.

Finally, businesses should continually train their employees on cybersecurity practices.

Quarterly reviews of policies and “routine” security announcements – whether at staff meetings, through emails, by way of a login splash or in paystub reminders – are great for communicating cybersecurity concerns.

The bottom line: banks are in a prime position to encourage their commercial clients to get serious about protecting their companies – and in doing so, protecting their teams, their clients, and their vendors – against cybercrime.

Everyone benefits from more cybersecurity – except, of course, the hackers. BNE

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WORKFORCE TRANSFORMATION

Three Essential Ideas to Help Solve the Bank Talent Crisis

BY BHUSHAN SETHI

Bhushan Sethi leads PwC’s

U.S. Financial Services People & Organization Practice.

Bhushan Sethi

T

he banking industry is experiencing a double tsunami of disruption – on one side by a radically changing banking environment, and on the other by the need to attract, engage and retain the right talent to anticipate and address these disruptive changes.

Whether it’s addressing the emergence of new fintech competitors, heightened regulatory and political scrutiny, robotics, cloud computing, contingent employees or planning for Brexit, banks struggle to match their evolving needs with strategic, business and workforce plans.

There are three essential concepts banks can adopt right now to better anticipate the future and manage it with the right talent: using data analytics, creating dynamic workforce demand/supply models and developing or accessing “talent exchanges.”

1. Use Data to Assess the Present and Plan for the Future

Data analysis can show if an organization has a correct executive succession plan in place, whether its workforce is top- or bottom-heavy, what its future needs are for contingent versus in-house staffing, and more. Together, HR and business leaders can usually find these descriptive analytics in existing reporting dashboards, but there also are visualization tools to further analyze how changes in business priorities might impact workforce projections.

Workforce analytics, creating a powerful understanding of a bank’s current situation, can examine engagement and performance trends to drive hiring and retention effectiveness. It also 20 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

can inform the next crucial step in the process, developing a supply/demand model.

2. Dynamic Workforce Models Based on Data A dynamic workforce model can reveal the drivers that impact future workforce needs. Maybe those needs require a different mix of capabilities, a workforce reduction or new onshore or offshore locations. New specialties may be required to address such disrupters as processing automation, unique digital identifiers within trading lifecycles or the need to digitize the workplace with the latest generation of cloud-based technology. You won’t know without a model.

As well, models can help predict the impact of other disruptive forces, such as changing customer preferences, interest rate increases, unexpected geopolitical events or new regulations that strain particular types of talent.

As for the contingent workforce, a workforce model can examine such factors as the balance between fixed and variable costs, capability gaps, recruitment cycle times, risk appetite and the organization’s willingness to work with external partners. A large number of mature financial institutions cannot, with a high degree of comfort, identify their contingent workforce at any point in time, particularly when it comes to the critical issue of system access.

3. Finding New Sources of Verifiable Talent

With these kinds of understandings in place, banks must now look to alternative ways of sourcing talent. The plain fact is that the traditional

ways simply aren’t sufficient to find and recruit the best folks for the changing times.

The bank hiring process is pretty opaque.

There is the potential for employees to go from one job to another without their new employers having any real understanding of their prior performance, personal ethics and values, whether they’re a good cultural fit, or if they can even fill the employment needs of the future. The current processes for background checks seem inadequate to filter out bad apples who might expose the firm to reputational and financial damage.

As a remedy, consider the concept of “talent exchanges,” an approach to hiring similar to how today’s sharing economy works. Here, banks and job seekers are matched through technology, algorithms, data and a little human judgment. In addition to validated prior employer references, this might include psychometric profiles, social media footprints and social sentiment.

Recruitment technology vendors might choose to build and launch a talentexchange platform, or the industry itself might create one. In October, The Wall Street Journal quoted Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley, speaking at a workshop devoted to fixing conduct problems in banks, urging the creation of an industry-wide “bad banker” registry, which would require changes in hiring, information sharing and employment law.

The talent exchange concept also can help banks attract the best and the brightest.

A competitive market has shifted the balance of power to the job seeker; a major question in the industry today is whether young talent even finds a job in banking attractive.

To address this, banks could employ former employees to provide to prospects reviews of their work experience, or immersive pre-employment visualization and experience through such methods as gamification, short trials and “day in the life” previews.

In the coming years the makeup of the bank workforce – how it’s recruited, organized and rewarded – will look very different than it is today, and it should. How banks make sure their workforce strategies are optimized for the future can determine their ultimate successes, or their failures. BNE

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Our new program, Jobs for New England, will award up to $5 million in interest-rate subsidies every year through 2018. A maximum of $250,000 in subsidy is available per member each year. At current rates, $250,000 can leverage up to $30 million in one-year advances.

To find out more about Jobs for New England, contact Fatima Razzaq at 617-425-9564, or fatima.razzaq@fhlbboston.com.

But don’t delay. These funds won’t last forever.

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FHLBBoston Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston • 800 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02199 • www.fhlbboston.com

BANKING NEW ENGLAND

21

ANOTHER REGULATORY HURDLE

Mortgage Lenders Brace for Implementation of New HMDA Requirements

BY BENJAMIN GIUMARRA

Ben Giumarra is a risk management consultant with Spillane Consulting. He may be reached at BenGiumarra@ SCAPartnering.com.

Ben Giumarra

A

cross the country, banks, credit unions and non-depository mortgage lenders are starting to brace for implementation of the final major regulatory reform provision from the Dodd-Frank Act. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has published final rules reforming the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), with a staggered rollout of provisions, some of which take effect on Jan. 1, 2017, with subsequent Jan. 1 implementation deadlines through 2020.The ability to adapt to new regulations has become a competitive advantage for the companies efficiently changing procedures, good training programs and decisive decisionmaking by company leaders.

I believe many (if not a majority of ) mortgage lenders in New England are taking this seriously and starting to prepare in earnest. These Dodd-Frank veterans are battle-tested and have seen heavy action since 2010; I believe they’ll get through HMDA even better than they did the major compensation,

future events (e.g., how would a hypothetical trade war affect interest rates?). With a major regulatory change like this, future shifts in strategy could be readily apparent to anyone who studies the proposed rules. Institutions where the HMDA rules will be implemented by employees without the direct involvement of leadership may be disadvantaging themselves.

Where to Start?

The first thing to understand are the various deadlines. The January 2018 deadline, when the new data collection and reporting requirements take effect, is the only one relevant to the vast majority of lenders.

Specifically, lenders must collect and report the new data fields for any loan where final action is taken on or after Jan. 1, 2018. So lenders will have to manage this transition, as a 2017 application may or may not be subject to the new requirements, depending on when final action is taken.

The particular issue of how to handle 2017 applications has caused mass confusion (recent CFPB rule changes contributing to this), but in summary: • Where final action is taken in 2017 on a 2017 application, the new HMDA rule has

Regulators will now have a complete set of pricing data on 100% of loans. servicing, underwriting or disclosure regulations passed in recent years.

When to Start?

I suppose you could wager that Presidentelect Donald Trump dismantles Dodd-Frank before your next compliance exam, but I vote for starting to prepare immediately. And some serious lenders appear to agree.

Early preparation and involvement by business leaders will enable strategic decisionmaking, such as with negotiations with vendors or other institutions or the allocation of resources. Companies are always betting on 22 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

no impact.

• Where final action is taken in 2018 on a 2017 application, the lender must report the new/modified data fields.

• A special rule applies regarding new data fields on race and ethnicity – “government monitoring information,” or GMI – which gives lenders flexibility in complying with the 2018 deadline: Where final action is taken in 2017 on a 2017 application, the lender must report the old GMI data but may voluntarily collect the new GMI data.

Where final action is taken in 2018 on a 2017 application, the lender may choose

whether to collect and report the old GMI data or to collect and report the new GMI data.

This flexibility is a good thing; collecting and reporting the GMI data requires personal questions to be answered by the borrower. This is unlike most of the other information, which can be collected without re-interviewing the borrower.

This flexibility was written into the rule for two purposes: to help lenders avoid violations of ECOA, and to permit lenders to ease compliance burden by starting to use new forms and processes early, at their own pace.

With more information on more loans, starting in spring 2019 regulators will use the new HMDA data to quickly identify (through statistical tools) fair lending issues they would never have found before (at least without spending a month digging through loan files).

Certainly any lender will want to selfidentify any such issues beforehand.

One example is with pricing discrimination. Regulators (and the public and competitors) will now have a complete set of pricing data on 100 percent of loans (previously we only reported a very small amount of pricing data on a very small number of loans).

This will make it easier to find pricing discrimination. Lenders that still allow sales officers significant discretion in loan pricing should be paying sharp attention.

Another good early step will be to identify which loan products are affected.

While all consumer-purpose loans and lines secured by a dwelling will now be reportable, there are special rules for business-purpose loans and unsecured loans are now not reportable. The big addition is HELOCs, which will now be subject to HMDA. So despite sales recruiters still promising compensation packages that violate 2014 TILA rules, closing attorneys still resisting post-TRID closing realities, and the secondary market still grappling with ability-torepay/qualified mortgage risks, mortgage lenders are forced to move on to the next major challenge. BNE

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There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

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We’re offering members zero-percent Classic Advances, on a first-come, first-served basis, to create or preserve jobs in their communities.

Our new program, Jobs for New England, will award up to $5 million in interest-rate subsidies every year through 2018. A maximum of $250,000 in subsidy is available per member each year. At current rates, $250,000 can leverage up to $30 million in one-year advances.

To find out more about Jobs for New England, contact Fatima Razzaq at 617-425-9564, or fatima.razzaq@fhlbboston.com.

But don’t delay. Zero-percent funds won’t last forever.

See what your cooperative can do for you!

FHLBBoston Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston • 800 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02199 • www.fhlbboston.com

BANKING NEW ENGLAND

23

FRESH PERSPECTIVE

Former Boston Private CEO Leading Acquisition of Admirals Bank

A

Mark D. Thompson

newly formed commercial banking firm lead by former Boston Private CEO announced in late October that it will buy Admirals Bank in a deal expected to close early next year.

Mark D. Thompson, formerly of Boston Private and now of First Boston Holdings, will head up the new bank, which will be named Bank & Trust Co. of Boston. The bank plans to raise $100 million, led

by Piper Jaffray, the lead placement agent and the financial advisor on the acquisition. The company did not disclose any financial details of the transaction.

In a statement, the company said that Bank & Trust Co. will offer full banking services with an emphasis on individuals and families, the not-forprofit sector, small and medium sized businesses and professional service firms.

“Boston is changing, with a fresh influx of young people who are creating wealth and need a financial institution to help them grow and preserve their wealth,” Thompson said in a statement. “Boston is a growing, innovative economy that needs a new bank to help provide capital to individuals, families and our business community. Bank & Trust Co. of Boston will be a true 21st century bank for these client relationships.”

Also joining Thompson at Bank & Trust Co. will be John J. Sullivan, a former executive vice president at Boston Private, William J. Shea, the former vice chairman and CFO at Bank of Boston and current

board chairman of Demoulas Supermarkets. Sullivan will become executive vice president and chief banking officer, and Shea will become chair of the new bank’s board. Rocco J. Maggiotto, former global leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Financial Services Practice, and Anthony A. Nickas, a cofounder and managing partner of First Atlantic Capital, will also join the board.

Bank & Trust Co. will maintain the two locations Admirals Bank already has, in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood and in Providence, Rhode Island, and plans to expand into Boston’s Seaport District after the deal is complete.

As of June 30, Admirals Bank had $445.6 million in assets, loans and leases totaling $336.9 million and deposits totaling $369.3 million, according to information available on the FDIC’s website. According to the FDIC, Admirals posted a net loss of about $1.7 million at June 30 and it posted a return on assets of negative 0.80 percent.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Piper Jaffray & Co., the lead placement agent, served as financial advisor to Bank & Trust Co. of Boston. Admirals’ financial advisor in the transaction was Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP, which will also act as a placement agent for the financing. First Boston is represented in the transaction by Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Admirals was represented by Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. BNE

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Career achievers in banks across New England are constantly on the move, with their professional journeys reflecting a combination of mobility and longstanding service. In this space, we acknowledge them, and welcome readers to submit news of their own banks’ efforts and endeavors to Editorial Director Cassidy Murphy at cmurphy@thewarrengroup.com.

Featured Banks • Berkshire Bank • Cape Cod Five • Country Bank • Eastern Bank • Ledyard National Bank

Appointments and Elections Berkshire Bank Berkshire Bank announced the appointment of Jim Hickson as senior vice president and commercial regional president for the Pioneer Valley and Connecticut markets. In his new role, Hickson will focus on growing the commercial lending Jim Hickson business, as well as expanding relationships with products and services offered through the bank’s other business lines including wealth management, private banking, insurance and retail banking. Hickson brings to the bank over 26 years of financial experience.

The bank also appointed Gregory Lindenmuth as executive vice president and chief risk officer.

Lindenmuth joins Berkshire Bank from the FDIC where he worked for 24 years, most recently as a senior risk examiner for the Division of Risk Management Supervision. In his new role, he will lead the loan workout, credit and enterprise risk management teams.

Cape Cod Five

The American Bankers Association elected Dorothy A. Savarese, CEO and president of Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, as chairman for the 2016-2017 association year.

She is the first woman to serve as CEO of Cape Cod Five Dorothy A. Savarese Cents Savings Bank in its more than 150-year history, and is the second woman elected as ABA chairman, following Virginia banker Elizabeth Duke, who was chair in 2004-2005.

Savarese has more than 20 years of experience in banking. After teaching credit analysis and working in economic development, Savarese joined Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank in 1993 as a part-time commercial lender. Later, she worked as senior vice president and director of product planning, and in 2004 was named COO of the bank.

Savarese succeeds outgoing ABA chairman and CEO of Georgia Bank & Trust, R. Daniel Blanton.

• Needham Bank • New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp • South Shore Bank • Reading Cooperative Bank • Webster Five Cents Savings Bank

26 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

Promotions Country Bank

Country Bank of Ware, Massachusetts, announced that Jennifer Bujnevicie and Laura Dennis have been promoted to regional managers of the bank’s retail banking division.

Jennifer Bujnevici Bujnevicie has been in the banking industry since 2004 and has held several positions during her tenure at Country Bank, beginning as a teller, and just prior to this promotion as the operations manager. Dennis joined Country Bank while still Laura Dennis in high school as a part-time file clerk in 2000, and became a full-time staff member upon her graduation. She began her career in the collections department, but then moved to retail banking to be with the customers, and has been there ever since.

Eastern Bank

Boston-based Eastern Bank announced that Lisa Fulton has been promoted to branch manager of its Duxbury office.

Previously, Fulton has worked as assistant branch manager and Lisa Fulton senior account representative.

She joined Eastern Bank in 2003. Fulton is also a member of the Duxbury Business Association, South Shore Business Leaders and Harmon Networking Professionals.

New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp

Debbie Irwin has been promoted to assistant vice president and marketing programs officer for New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp, Debbie Irwin overseeing events, community outreach and support, scholarship programs,

Promotions advertising, business banking campaigns and marketing. Irwin began as the marketing programs manager at Meredith Village Savings Bank in 2011.

Reading Cooperative Bank

Reading Cooperative Bank has promoted Amy Van Magness to branch supervisor of its new educational branch at the Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational High School in Wakefield, Massachusetts, which opened at the start of the school year. In this role, Van Magness is Amy Van Magness responsible for the overall supervision of the new high school branch, including all banking activities, sales, loans and management of staff. She works with and trains student tellers in all

aspects of teller responsibilities, including operational and regulatory facets. In addition, she is working closely with school personnel to develop, promote and market the school banking program.

Webster Five Cents Savings Bank

Webster Five Cents Savings Bank has named Robert Totaro as business lending officer, after working as branch manager in Worcester since its opening in October 2015. Totaro brings 17 years of experience working in the banking industry. He joined the Webster Five team in 2007. In his new Robert Totaro role, Totaro will be responsible for developing new business, structuring and closing commercial loans and maintaining the existing loan portfolio.

New Arrivals Eastern Bank

Boston-based Eastern Bank announced Catherine Scherer has joined as vice president and commercial real estate relationship Catherine Scherer manager. Scherer, who works out of the company’s office in Saugus, most recently worked as vice president and commercial lending officer at Beverly Bank and, prior to that, worked Katherine Castro as a vice president and commercial real estate lender at Belmont Savings Bank. In both roles, she was responsible for generating new commercial loan relationships with real estate developers and investors. The bank also announced that Katherine Castro joined as vice president and mortgage loan originator in its home and finance department. Castro will work out of the Lawrence office, originating loans in the Merrimack Valley area. Prior to joining Eastern Bank, Castro was assistant vice president and mortgage loan officer with Pentucket Bank.

Ledyard National Bank

Hanover, New Hampshire-based Ledyard National Bank announced that Kayla Pearsons has joined the Kayla Pearsons company as the new branch manager at the Route 120 Lebanon location. Pearsons joined Ledyard as the branch supervisor in Hanover in June 2014, and moved into the role of personal banker in February 2015.

Needham Bank

Needham Bank announced the hiring of Peter Bakkala as senior vice president of risk management. Bakkala is a seasoned banking Peter Bakkala professional with 30 years of experience in risk management, audit and compliance. Most recently, he was president of government and professionals banking at Citizens Bank.

South Shore Bank

South Weymouth, Massachusetts-based South Shore Bank announced the hiring of the following employees. Glenn E. Tattrie joined as chief risk and Glenn E. Tattri compliance officer. Tattrie brings more than 20 years of banking risk management and compliance experience to his new position at South Shore Bank, working most recently as director of John P. Barron operational risk at Santander Holdings U.S.A. in Boston.

John P. Barron has been named vice president and director of business and strategic intelligence. Barron comes to South Shore Bank from Rockland Trust Co., Emily E. Perkins where he was vice president of strategy and analytics. Emily E. Perkins has joined as community relations advisor. Perkins previously worked as a case manager at Father Bill’s and MainSpring in Brockton, and as a senior legal and administration assistant at Jager Smith P.C. in Boston. BNE

BANKING NEW ENGLAND

27

PROTECTING GOOD VULNERABLE COMMUNITY WORKS CLIENTS

Financial institutions large and small have been making a difference in their communities for years. In this space, we acknowledge them, and welcome readers to submit news of their own banks’ efforts and endeavors to Editorial Director Cassidy Murphy at cmurphy@thewarrengroup.com.

Androscoggin Bank

Bristol County Savings Bank

Lewiston, Maine-based Androscoggin Bank’s MainStreet Foundation granted $12,500 to three organizations that aim to help kids thrive.

BankNewport

Featured Banks • Androscoggin Bank • BankNewport • Bristol County Savings Bank • Charles River Bank

BankNewport has awarded $50,000 to Lucy’s Hearth in Middletown, Rhode Island to name a large family unit in its new building.

Charles River Bank

• Dedham Institution for Savings • East Boston Savings Bank • Franklin Savings Bank • Ledyard National Bank

Bristol County Savings Charitable Foundation of Taunton, Massachusetts awarded grants totaling $40,200 to eight Pawtucket, Rhode Island area nonprofit organizations, including the Festival Ballet Providence, Girl Scouts of Southeastern New England, Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Reach Out and Read Rhode Island, Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School, St. John Paul II Society of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Teresa School and Good Neighbors Inc.

Dedham Institution for Savings

• Meredith Village Savings Bank • Merrimack County Savings Bank • Newburyport Five Cents Savings Bank

Medway, Massachusetts-based Charles River Bank donated $1,000 to the Medway Christmas Parade Committee.

East Boston Savings Bank

• New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp • SpencerBANK

The Dedham Institution for Savings Foundation of Dedham, Massachusetts donated $30,000 to the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham to help fund the new Breast Care Center at BID-Needham.

• Southbridge Savings Bank

Franklin Savings Bank East Boston Savings Bank was proud to present students Miguel Anthony and Isaiah Marcel of Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, with an educational scholarship towards their continued college studies.

Franklin Savings Bank Franklin Savings Bank participated in the 23rd Annual FSB Charity Softball Tournament in September at Odell Park in Franklin, New Hampshire. The event raised $6,200 that will be donated to Greater Tilton Area Family Resource Center and HOPE for New Hampshire Recovery’s Franklin Center.

28 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

Franklin, New Hampshire-based Franklin Savings Bank honored 16 community organizations for their contributions to improving the lives of individuals throughout the Central New Hampshire Region at the 4th Annual Fund for Community Advancement Event held Oct. 11 at the Lochmere Country Club in Tilton, New Hampshire.

Ledyard National Bank

Newburyport Five Cents Savings Bank

Ledyard National Bank honored five local nonprofit organizations to commemorate its 25th anniversary – The Family Place, The Good Neighbor Health Clinic, The Haven, Lake Sunapee Region VNA and Hospice and WISE of the Upper Valley.

Meredith Village Savings Bank

Newburyport Five Cents Savings Charitable Foundation donated $2,000 to support Horizons for Homeless Children to refurbish a Playspace in a temporary family shelter in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp

New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp’s Meredith Village Savings Bank, Merrimack County Savings Bank and MillRiver Wealth Management sponsored the 2016 New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival in Laconia, New Hampshire.

SpencerBANK and Southbridge Savings Bank

Meredith Village Savings Bank has committed to a $350,000 donation to the Belknap Economic Development Council for the Colonial Theater Redevelopment Project in Laconia, New Hampshire.

Merrimack County Savings Bank Merrimack County Savings Bank Foundation granted $2,700 to Catholic Charities New Hampshire in support of its Basic Financial Fitness program.

Massachusetts-based SpencerBANK and Southbridge Savings Bank employees recently teamed up to support the Angel Fund for ALS Research. On Sept. 2, they held a Jeans for a Cause fundraiser event and raised over $1,400 for the Angel Fund.

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PROTECTING VULNERABLE IN CASE YOU MISSED IT CLIENTS

Featured Banks • Bank of Cape Cod

Construction Underway in Hooksett for New Merrimack County Savings Bank Office

• Franklin Savings Bank • Independent Bank Corp.

• Meredith Village Savings Bank • Merrimack County Savings Bank • Primary Bank • Rockland Trust

Merrimack County Savings Bank recently began construction on its newest office in Hooksett, New Hampshire. The branch is expected to open in the summer of 2017, and will be Merrimack’s second office in Hooksett and its ninth branch overall. The bank has also opened a full-service branch inside the welcome center on Interstate 93 North and Route 3A.

Meredith Village Savings Bank to Open Micro-Branch in Melvin Village

Meredith Village Savings Bank (MVSB) has opened a new branch in Melvin Village. It is the New Hampshire bank’s 12th office location and will offer modern banking services.

“We’re excited about the Melvin Village branch, the newest addition to the MVSB family,” MVSB President Rick Wyman said in a statement. “The Melvin Village location makes us more accessible to residents and businesses in Tuftonboro and surrounding towns.”

Franklin Savings Bank Unveils New Logo and Tagline

“When we began this process a year ago, we knew that we wanted to retain our name based upon our history of serving the needs of our customers and the community. However, as we continue to focus on investing in new technology as well as devoting more resources to providing customer education, we felt it was important for our brand and image to reflect these areas of focus,” Franklin Savings Bank President Ron Magoon said in a statement.

Primary Bank in New Hampshire Marks One-Year Anniversary

Primary Bank, New Hampshire’s newest locally owned and operated full-service community bank, marked its one-year anniversary on July 28. The Bedford-based institution was the first bank to open in New Hampshire in over seven years and the second commercial bank to open in the country since 2010.

“From our retail staff up through our senior management team, we’re all New Hampshire bankers. We know our customers and we know New Hampshire,” President and CEO Bill Stone said in a statement. “Our board of directors is made up of a dynamic group of New Hampshire business leaders each with strong ties to the local community. That means decision making is done locally and quickly and is based on first-hand knowledge of the state’s current business climate. I think that’s something our customers appreciate.”

Primary Bank hopes to add a second branch location, new staff and new banking products including merchant card services, private label credit card, health savings accounts and online account opening in the upcoming months.

Rockland Closes Bank Of Cape Cod Purchase

Franklin Savings Bank (FSB) has launched a new logo and tagline to reflect the bank’s ongoing commitment to growth, investment in technology and customer education. The tagline “Smarter Banking.

Easier Living” highlights FSB’s focus on technology and its ability to make managing finances easier for customers, and the revamped logo brings a more modern look to the bank.

In addition to the rollout of the bank’s more contemporary branding, a new website will be unveiled containing the more secure .bank domain.

Reserved exclusively for banks, the new .bank domain aims to provide an added layer of security as well as a safer channel for confidential communications between banks and customers.

30 BANKING NEW ENGLAND

Independent Bank Corp. in November announced it had closed on its acquisition of New England Bancorp.

The legal closing occurred Nov. 11; New England Bancorp was merged with and into Independent, and the Bank of Cape Cod was merged with and into Rockland Trust.

“This acquisition strengthens Rockland Trust’s Cape Cod presence,” Independent and Rockland Trust CEO Christopher Oddleifson said in a statement. “We look forward to introducing Bank of Cape Cod customers to all that Rockland Trust has to offer.”

On Monday, Nov. 14, the former Bank of Cape Cod branch located at 57 West Bay Road in Osterville opened and immediately begin to operate as a Rockland Trust location. The three other former Bank of Cape Cod branches were closed and consolidated into existing Rockland Trust locations. BNE

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