Page 28 - BusinessWest January 22, 2024

addition to seeking other opportunities for future expansion.
“Our commercial-lending business has been extremely success-
ful in the Connecticut market,” Senecal noted. “We’ve hired some commercial lenders and residential lenders in the Connecticut mar- ket. We’ve always had a large presence on the commercial side, but since we’ve developed the retail side, it has brought us some syner- gies in the relationships with those commercial customers, bringing them in as retail customers as well. It’s been hugely successful.”
Canina agreed. “We’re at a very important time right now to real- ly continue pushing the growth of People’sBank down into Connect- icut and looking into other areas to grow. That’s what we’re really focused on, and I feel confident we’re going to have a lot of success.”
Soaring Assets
The numbers tell the story of PeoplesBank’s recent upward trajectory.
“When I took over as president and CEO in 2016, we were a $1.8 billion bank,” Senecal told BusinessWest. “We ended 2023 just shy of $4.1 billion. So we’ve more than doubled in those seven years.”
The bank also boasts more than 300 employees and operates 20 banking centers across Massachusetts and Connecticut, with an additional five locations when its headquarters, ATM, and Vid- eoBankerITM locations are included, he noted. “That’s quite a bit of recent growth, which is a credit to the hard work of our entire team.”
Over the past couple years, PeoplesBank also began partnering with Zynlo, a digital bank, Senecal said. “That is starting to really take off. When we talk about growth, traditionally, brick and mortar has been our main source of banking growth. With the digital bank, that has taken on a whole different perspective.
“We’ve got different lines of business, and we’re starting a per- sonal banking division of the bank,” he added. “We have the Peo- plesWealth division. Those weren’t in existence a few years ago, so these different banking channels are really what’s driving some of our growth.”
Other expansion opportunities exist because of the merger-and-
acquisition environment among large banks and how that disrupts a marketplace, Canina said, citing as one example M&T Bank’s acqui- sition of People’s United Bank. “That acquisition opens up opportu- nities for us to jump in on the disruption down in the Connecticut market and, in some cases, Western Massachusetts as well, but mostly down in the Connecticut market, which is why we have our sights set on organic growth down there.”
Opportunities will also arise from banks that aren’t faring as well as PeoplesBank, he said, due partly to the compression on inter- est margins coupled with increased costs for human resources and compliance, as well as coming regulatory changes.
“Some of these smaller banks are really going to be challenged,” Canina explained. “And I think that we’re at a size — more than $4 billion in assets — where we’re in a very good position to partner with another bank that’s smaller and having challenges, so I think there’s going to be opportunity there for us.”
Of course, PeoplesBank continues to grapple with those same headwinds, he added.
“The challenges right now are coming from the interest-rate envi- ronment, where the margins have really compressed from the short- term rates coming up and long-term rates coming up a bit, but not as much as the short end of the curve. So we’re paying deposits on the short end and then lending out on the long end, and there’s not a big spread there. It makes it challenging, not just for us, but for all banks.
“At the same time, a lot of the pandemic deposits that came
in have started to flow out; people started spending more money, and they have the ability to to move deposits anywhere they want very easily,” Canina continued. “So the industry has been chal- lenged with managing the interest-rate environment and maintain- ing deposit levels, and I see that continuing into 2024. Depending on what happens with interest rates, it’s not likely going to let up until we see the short end start to come down. And then we’ll face some different chal-
lenges when that hap-
pens, because most
likely there will be some
“It’s something that we’ve been working toward, and with the size of the bank and how we’ve grown, it was a good timing to make this more formal change.”
BRIAN CANINA
Peoples
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