Page 54 - BusinessWest December 22, 2021

PeoplesBank
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The commercial-lending department is now up to 50 people, Crinella noted. “The team complements each other so well. They brought in a lot of credit analysts that have C&I experience, so we’ve got depth now on the underwriting side.”
He was also drawn to a lending model at Peoples that prioritizes the ability of lenders to make quick decisions (more on that later).
“We talk about speed to market around here — we make all our decisions here on Whitney Avenue, so we can turn around a loan request quickly, and kind of outmuscle the big boys in that way ... and, with the depth that we brought, outmuscle the local competi- tion as well.”
Lending Support
Senecal said he knew PeoplesBank could excel at C&I lending based on its culture and ability to forge relationships through its branches.
“C&I is small business,” he explained. “And the interconnectivity between our branch network and our C&I lending is extremely important. It’s very dif- ficult to develop a relationship on the small-business side without a branch network. So, in a lot of my con- versations with Frank, we’re focused on our growth strategy and continuing to have the brick-and-mortar strategy, which complements the C&I side.”
Retail banking, Senecal noted, is moving in the direction of digital modes like mobile banking, online bill pay, and ITMs.
“When you talk C&I lending and small-business lending, you can’t do all that digitally online. You need a relationship. Accounts are very different for small businesses than they are on the retail side, between
needing cash-management services, wires, positive pay ... there are a lot of different functionalities small businesses utilize, more than the typical retail cus- tomer. A lot of services need to be communicated, and you can’t do that necessarily digitally. So the branch network has a huge impact.”
Crinella called it “delivering the bank.”
To explain that concept, he noted that, “when
a relationship lender goes out to visit a customer, oftentimes they’ll bring the banking-center manager as well as the cash-man-
agement professionals, so
the customer gets the entire
bank when they’re meeting
with the relationship lender.
That’s really the difference
between C&I and com-
mercial real-estate lending.
That’s what we’re trying to
capture when we talk about
relationship lending.”
The relationships cus- tomers already had with the lenders who moved to Peoples have generated some business as well, Sen- ecal said.
“When you transition a
group of five people from
one institution to another, you create some loyalty from those customers who had relationships with them, and you can tell that the relationship means a lot. We’re getting great, positive feedback as a result of that.”
Crinella agreed. “They become valued advisors to the customer,” he said. “They take the time to under- stand their business and make informed decisions.
Again, I think speed to market has been a huge com- petitive advantage. We get there quick. We can get
a term sheet out in 48 hours, and that’s something, competitively, the big boys have a tough time com- peting with.”
With Oleksak, and soon with Crinella, it was important that both titles — senior lender and senior credit officer — fall under the same individual, Sene- cal said.
“We talk about speed to market around here —
we make all our decisions here on Whitney Avenue, so we can turn around a loan request quickly.
“From a customer’s perspective, when Frank shows up at the table, he has the decision-mak- ing authority for quite a few loans. Certainly, when loans get larger, we have a committee, we meet and talk, but Frank has the ability to sit at the table and make decisions immediately with customers based on what he sees.
“That doesn’t occur at most larger institu- tions,” Senecal went on, “where the lender goes out and gets the loan, develops the conversa- tion, and then goes back with all the information and says, ‘OK, this is the deal. This is the terms of the deal I’d like to do.’ And they sit around with other people — adjudicators, other credit people, who say, ‘yeah, I don’t like that deal. You need to do this, you need to get that.’ And it becomes a group decision.”
That’s not the best or most efficient experi- ence for the customer, he said.
“When you sit in front of a customer and you make the customer believe we’re going to do the deal, then you go back to the office and all of a sudden
five different people have their opinions on what it should look like, it’s really hard to go back to the cus- tomer and say, ‘yeah, the deal’s changed.’”
”
That’s why it’s important to empower
PeoplesBank
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