Jim Brady
Title: Market Manager, Healthcare Practice Solutions Group, TD Bank
Age: 31
Experience: 10 years
Beverly native and Bentley grad Jim Brady got into commercial lending right out of school when he started working at GE Capital in its health care finance segment. From there, he moved onto CapitalSource in Maryland, but had only been there a short time when Dan Croft, TD Bank’s head of health care practice solutions, recruited him to come aboard. When he isn’t banking dental and veterinary practices, he enjoys hiking, skiing and rooting for the New England Patriots.
Q: Can you give us a rough sketch of TD’s work in the health care market?
A: We’ve been in this market for about three and a half years now, since April 2012 … in our small business banking division, which has a lending limit around $1 million.
TD very much likes this space for various reasons, and around two years ago decided to look at expanding the specialty division to focus on practice finance – dentists, veterinarians, medical doctors, eye care professionals –and build it out, [using] the experience we’ve had in small business to expand into what we call our regional commercial bank. We’ve worked on building out a commercial policy which allows us to offer financing up to $12 million. From a customer’s perspective, we’re marketing as our health care practice solutions group, which is from zero to $12 million.
Q: How would you characterize the majority of your clients in this practice?
A: The majority of our business is focused on six industries, if you will. A lot of our business is focused on both the dental and the veterinary market from Maine to Florida.
The primary reason for that is we’re focused on owner-operated practices, which really collateralizing on the intangible goodwill of these practices, which is very prevalent within the dental and the vet market. There is a large demand for the dental practices and the vet practices so that’s really our primary focus, but it gives us also the ability to help medical doctors, podiatrists, ophthalmologists and optometrists as well.
From a demand perspective, mostly in the dental and the vet market, it’s an extremely competitive market – in this area in particular for dental practice sales. One of our major focuses is on dental practice acquisitions.
Q: Why is that?
A: Well, largely because we have had an aging population, right? The Baby Boomers have been delaying their retirement, so we’ve got an aging dental population, so they’ve been holding onto their practices for much longer than we’d expect and delaying retirement for various reasons. So you have a shortage of dental practices for sale and a surplus of both demand and people who are looking for practices. One of the factors, of course, is that we have several dental schools in Massachusetts, so you have a surplus of dentists, especially dentists who are looking for practices to purchase.
A focus of ours is on practice acquisitions, but we do provide financing for a full service for dental professionals: equipment finance, real estate finance, practice acquisitions, buy-ins, buyouts, refinances, those types of things. [Practice acquisitions] is a focus of ours, but it’s certainly not the only thing we do.
It’s a really small niche market … You work very closely with your dentists, your vets, your medical doctors, and they look to you for guidance. Working with us is sometimes one of the most important decisions they’ll make in their careers in purchasing a practice or relocating a practice. It sounds cheesy, but you do get to kind of help them realize their dreams, especially for a younger doctor who’s coming out of school and looking around to find out what’s next.
Q: Commercial lending is undergoing something of a demographic crisis where younger talent is concerned. As a younger guy yourself, did you plan or study for a career in commercial banking or did you take a different route into the field?
A: It was something that I specifically studied for. I went to Bentley, right around the corner. That’s not a prerequisite for TD Bank. [laughs]
So GE capital, the division that I was in, was really more small business lending. I would classify what we do as small business lending-plus, because in traditional commercial lending and you’re looking at $10, $20, $30 million facilities and sometimes our sweet spot for lending really is between $500,000 and $3 million, so we’re not seeing extremely large transactions as you would in a traditional commercial lending institution.
But I got into it as a really small business lender and was very lucky to work with an extremely talented group of individuals throughout my career.
This industry is different than your traditional commercial lending platform, where you go through credit training and you learn very specific credit training metrics, which is a very valuable asset to have. However, when you look at this specific industry that all kind of goes out the window because this is really cash flow-based lending.
For more from Brady, see his video interview on B&T’s Media Center.
Brady’s Top Five Winter Hikes In The White Mountains:
- Mt. Eisenhower
- Mt. Bondcliff
- Mt. Washington
- Mt. Monroe
- Mt. Galehead
