Mary Dean
Title: Senior Vice President, Commercial Lending Officer, Clinton Savings Bank
Age: 44
Experience: 22 years
Mary Dean’s upbringing was heavily suffused with service to others. Though her parents never talked much about it, she recalls childhood memories of sitting in the backyard and helping her mother stuff envelopes. Dean always thought she would be a teacher, but when she graduated from Harvard University in 1992, she decided to dip her toes into banking to see if she could make it in the business world. Not long after launching her career in the commercial lending world, her employer, Fleet Bank, “loaned” her to the United Way to help the organization fundraise for a few months. Given that background, it’s not too surprising that Dean found her way back into community banking and heading up the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activities at Clinton Savings Bank. In her free time, she also serves on the board of the YWCA of Central Massachusetts, heads up the Leominster Rotary Club and volunteers at her church.
Q: Government mandates aside, why is it important for a community bank to invest in its community?
A:I think it’s for the success of all involved. I think the bank’s existence and ability to thrive is dependent on the community’s existence and ability to thrive. So we hope that when we make those donations or when we make those small business loans that those individuals remember who we are, so when it’s time to open a checking account, they’ll remember “Clinton Savings Bank supports us, and CSB is local and has people I can talk to. Of course I’m going to come see them.”
Q: What are you looking to do in terms of commercial loan growth this year?
A: Our loan growth over the past three or four years has averaged about 11 percent in the portfolio – some years are bigger, some years are smaller. [My boss] is looking for us to do about the same, which could be a bit of a challenge in these economic times. The competition is tough. I don’t think our market is similar to how the competition in Boston might look, but for the larger deals, there are typically many banks bidding on them.
We like to do the million to $2 million loans that would help our portfolio grow, but we’re here for the $10,000 loans, too. Often I’m the one that does them, which is not necessarily because I’m the CRA officer. I’m assigned to the Clinton and the Sterling branches, and Clinton gets a lot of small business traffic, so that could be why I do more of the smaller loans. I really believe that’s what we’re here for. They’re not going to be able to easily walk into a giant bank and get a $25,000 loan.
I think there’s still some uncertainty out there regarding mandates around health care. Small business owners are concerned about adding people or buying a new piece of property because they don’t know if they’re going to be able to meet payroll and whatever governmental constraints come down the pike in two months. But that uncertainty has been there for the past couple years, and we’ve been able to perform and see some nice loan growth, so the hope is that this year we’ll be able to do just as well.
Q: Does your own volunteer work ever intersect with the work you do at Clinton Savings?
A: Being involved in those organizations helps my job in that it opens up opportunities and allows me to meet other people. It also helps me build other skills outside of my job, like public speaking, and here I’m not a manager of people, but as president of the rotary club, I am.
There are opportunities also to make those connections. For example, because I sit on the board of the YWCA, I learned that the Y was looking for office space in Clinton. They have court advocates that work with victims of domestic violence through the court process, so they wanted an advocate to be located in Clinton to cover the Clinton courthouse. I also had a customer that I knew had office space so I was able to connect them. It all worked out nicely because they’re both nonprofits and it was very inexpensive for everybody, but the other nonprofit was able to get some money.
Then there’s the obvious opportunity of just hearing about lending opportunities and having the bank’s name out there. At rotary, I was asked to sing the national anthem at the Leominster mayor’s inauguration, and I was introduced as Mary Dean from Clinton Savings Bank, so it’s that little stuff, it definitely helps.
Mary Dean’s Top Five Celebrity Chefs:
- Mary Ann Esposito
- Rachael Ray
- Ina Garten
- Lidia Bastianich
- Bobby Flay
