Page 16 - BusinessWest July 7, 2021

going to continue to be disruption — every- where, not just in Western Mass.,” he went on. “And we think, with our balance sheet and exist- ing franchise and the investments we’ve been making, which have been significant over the past few years, to really up our digital offerings across the board, we’re in a great position to enter a great market that means a lot to the executive leadership here at Liberty Bank.”
Lending Support
Since launching activity in Greater Springfield, Liberopoulos and the rest of the lending team have assembled a broad variety of clients. “It’s across the board,” he said. “We’ll do loans up to $50 million for the right client, or even higher
“As a bank with our size and history, and the teams we have, we’re in a unique position where we can kind of out-local national banks and out-national local banks.”
than that. We’re primarily looking at small to medium-sized businesses. We’ll look at invest- ment real-estate deals, and we’ll look at any pri- vately held business, if it’s the right size for us.”
Like the Greater Hartford market in which Lib-
erty has recently expanded its presence, Glidden doesn’t see loans in a vacuum, but rather takes a big-picture look at how each loan-funded project or expansion impacts economic development in an entire region.
“It’s important, when you’re a community bank and you go into a market, that you have
a strategy to align with and understand what’s going on in those markets. Who are the key economic-development companies, the drivers? Who are the key not-for-profits that we can align ourselves with and support? Because when we invest in the communities we do business in, it’s not only the right thing to do, it’s smart business.”
As it eyes growth across its footprint, including expansion of retail, investment, and other ser- vices in Western Mass., Liberty is making another kind of investment, Glidden said: in its digital channels.
“Banking customers’ habits are changing rap- idly. They were changing rapidly before the pan- demic,” he said. “But, obviously, the pandemic forced people to adopt online channels that, before, they wouldn’t have felt comfortable with, or didn’t think they needed — but it became a need during the pandemic.”
Part of the bank’s strategy for this region includes what shape the physical footprint will take to support the services Liberty wants to pro- vide, he noted — but that strategy must roll out in tandem with the digital one.
“Branches are changing, and customers’ hab- its are changing — they’re using them less, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still important,”
Liberty
Continued on page 21
Tony Liberopoulos (left) and Dave Glidden say there’s a space in Western Mass. for a bank of Liberty’s size and local focus.
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