Page 24 - BusinessWest January 22, 2024

“The habits of consumers and small businesses, what they’re looking for from a bank, are not the same as they were 15 years ago.”
its beachhead and take the I-91 corridor strategy to different corners of the 413.
For this issue and its focus on banking and finan- cial services, BusinessWest talked with Glidden about the next possible steps with this strategy and how the drive north will unfold.
Points of Interest
Glidden laughed when he noted that, when people tell him they see the bank’s TV commercials — “the ones with the emu and that guy with the mustache”
— he no longer makes the effort to correct them and inform them that those are for the insurance giant Lib- erty Mutual.
“Why bother — what am I fighting it for?” he asked rhetorically, adding quickly that the last four words of each of those frequently, as in frequently, aired spots — ‘Liberty, Liberty, Liberty ... Liberty’ — constitute solid name recognition that he doesn’t have to pay for. “Every time I see that commercial, I’m cheering; peo- ple come up to me and say, ‘I saw your commercial.’
I just say, ‘thank you; let me open a checking account for you.’”
This form of free advertising, if you will, is just one of many things that have gone well for Liberty over the past several years. In fact, Glidden said 2023 may be the bank’s third straight year of record profits, though the final numbers are not yet in.
But even if it’s not a record, the bank is maintaining a strong upward trajectory, which it owes to several factors, but especially its aggressive I-91 corridor strat- egy and the qualities needed to carry it out and gain market share across that wide area.
Elaborating, Glidden said the bank has several advantages, from a name that resonates and crosses state lines easily to a broad portfolio of products on
both the commercial and consumer sides of the ledger; from a commitment to the latest digital technology to an attractive size.
Indeed, with more than $7 billion in assets and
56 locations in Connecticut and two in the Bay State, Liberty, the oldest mutual bank in the country, can “out-local the national banks and out-national the local banks,” said Glidden, a native of Holyoke who is well- known in this region and has long considered Western Mass. the next logical area of expansion for the bank.
“We can deliver a balance sheet that’s going to be large enough for 99.9% of the companies up there
to grow to whatever they want to be,” he said, adding that this size, coupled with lenders who know and hail from Western Mass., has enabled Liberty to make solid inroads in the local market and presents opportunities to gain market share in this region.
And many changes to the banking landscape, but especially the advent and continued evolution of digital platforms and mobile apps, make it easier to cross state lines, he went on.
“The habits of consumers and small businesses, what they’re looking for from a bank, are not the same as they were 15 years ago,” Glidden explained. “Do they want to know that their bank has a branch so that, if there’s an issue, they can go in and sit with someone and get advice? Yes. But, across the board, transactions and visitations to branches continue to decline, and that decline is not projected to slow down any time soon.
“And that kind of changes the playing field in the sense of being able to go over the line with maybe a toe in the market,” he continued. “If this was 10 to 15 years ago, and I made the decision that I wanted Liberty to go into Western
Massachusetts Liberty
and compete, I Continued on page 26 probably would
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24 JANUARY 22, 2024 << BANKING & FINANCE >>
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