Page 82 - BusinessWest September 1, 2021
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 ford County cried out for a full-service physical branch.
“We absolutely need it. The majority of our new accounts are still opened at brick-and-mor- tar locations. For more complex conversations, customers want to talk to a person, and they want to have that live interaction. There still is a need for that face-to-face contact.
“I think what the industry is trying to do with the self-service channels — with online, with mobile, with video bankers — is give people the ability to do the quick, day-to-day transactions
“The banking centers are there for when they need a little more contact, when they have a little more complexity, or they just want to expand their relationship. We need to make sure we have everything.”
when they want to, without having to park and go in and talk to somebody, and get it done quickly,” she went on. “The banking centers are there for when they need a little more contact, when they have a little more complexity, or they just want to expand their relationship. We need to make sure we have everything.”
Michael Oleksak, executive vice president
and chief lending and credit officer, said all those Connecticut dol- lars in the bank’s com- mercial portfolio have not come mainly from the Granby-Suffield area, but predated those physical locations.
“We have a significant amount of business in the Greater Hartford area, specifically in the Farm- ington, Glastonbury, West Hartford communities and downtown Hartford, butwealsogoasfaras New Haven and Green- wich. So our tentacles
are fairly long when it comes to our Connecticut presence.
“Most of that is in
commercial real estate,
which tends to be more
transactional,” he went
on.“Weareabletodoa
lot of full-service bank-
ing for these commercial
real-estate customers because of our cash-man- agement expertise and the different products we have, but without a branch presence, it’s really difficult to do business banking.”
The branch presence in West Hartford allows the team to do more commercial and industrial (C&I) lending, and complements a recent expan- sion of the bank’s C&I team with former TD Bank
      Matt Bannister with one of the West Hartford branch’s two interactive video teller machines.
  veterans, Oleksak noted.
“We have a very strong following now, and I
think by having a physical presence there, we’ll become a more visible part of the community,” he went on. “We do support our current borrowers, including with a lot of their philanthropic initia- tives, but it’s kind of behind the scenes because we don’t have a presence there. But with a physi- cal presence, and with the disruption in the mar-
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 26 SEPTEMBER 1, 2021
BANKING & FINANCE
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