Page 14 - BusinessWest July 7, 2021

Banking & Finance
Stating Its Case
Connecticut-based Liberty Bank Seeks to Grow in Western Mass.
Dave Glidden is no stranger to the Western Mass. banking community, and neither is the lending team he’s assembled to grow Liberty Bank — the Connecticut-based institution he currently serves as president and CEO — within this region. Liberty’s leaders believe those community ties — some of the Western Mass. team’s lenders have worked in this market for three decades — will prove fruitful at a time when customers are looking for experience and stability.
L
By Joseph Bednar
iberty Bank is the oldest currently operating bank in Connecticut. But Dave Glidden prefers not to think in terms of state lines.
“We’ve been in Connecticut a long time, and very recently we’ve crossed the border into Western Mass.,” said Glidden, the bank’s presi-
dent and CEO and a familiar figure to the Pioneer Valley’s banking com-
munity from his years as regional president at TD Bank.
The reasons for the northward push, he said, seemed obvious.
“When I looked at this opportunity and took the job, one of the things I talked
about with the board and my teammates was that, when you think about it, there are so many similarities between Connecticut and the Greater Springfield market, economically and culturally; people work back and forth across the border.
“So, really, if you stop looking at state boundaries for a second, we really lend in that I-91 corridor, New Haven on up through Middletown, through Hartford, and now into Greater Springfield,” he went on. “There are many similarities in indus- tries and types of businesses, and we know a lot of the borrowers, the centers of influence, the CPA firms, the legal firms ... and we know many of the businesses.”
That’s because Glidden and Liberty’s Western Mass. team — Chief Credit Offi-
Tony Liberopoulos says Liberty Bank might be new to Western Mass., but its lenders are anything but.
14 JULY 7, 2021
BANKING & FINANCE
BusinessWest