Walter Dwyer
Title: President and CEO, North Middlesex Savings Bank
Age: 44
Experience: 23 years
If you looked up “community banker” in the dictionary, you might well find Walter “Wally” Dwyer’s picture next to it. Dwyer only briefly dabbled in selling life insurance after college until he landed a bank teller gig at Bank East in Portsmouth, N.H. He later moved into operations and then commercial lending. After 10 years in New Hampshire banks, Dwyer moved to Bay State Savings Bank in Worcester and then to Spencer Savings Bank. Three years ago, he came to North Middlesex Savings Bank and last fall, the bank’s trustees elected him to the top position. Dwyer, who lives in Pepperell, says of the job, “It’s nice to be a community banker in my own community again.”
Q: Let’s start with the basics: What are your main priorities this year as the president and CEO?
A: For me personally, it’s getting acclimated to the new role and the many competing demands on my time, but for the bank, it’s not overly complicated.
First, we still have some lingering asset quality issues. This area has been, we think, particularly hard-hit, but as a community bank we’ve been working hard with our borrowers to negotiate the protracted tough economy. We have had some foreclosures, but I think that we’ve been as accommodating as any other community bank. As much as we can, we’re working with our borrowers.
Second, we had a good year last year in terms of bank profitability. We need to manage our budget and manage our profitability. Like almost every bank, we were bolstered by a strong refinance market on the residential mortgage side.
That was really nice, but we know we can’t depend on that to carry us forward, so that leads into goal number three, which is to get new customers and expand our relationships with our existing customers.
We also need to invest in making sure that my staff is able to identify the right products for our customers. It’s a little bit of sales training, but it’s a little consulting, too.
Q: You said your area has been particularly hard-hit – tell me about the communities you serve?
A: They’re widely stratified. Some people are doing phenomenal, some are really hurting. Those tied closely to the housing market are probably hurting the most, but on the other hand there’s some really good activity going on in the high tech and biosciences industries.
One of the big drivers in our local area is Devens. You can see the old Fort Devens from here. It’s central to our economy. The closing of Fort Devens back in the 1990s was not devastating, but it was a significant impact on our area. We’ve seen some good activity over there, but Devens is clearly not where any of us as business leaders would like it to be.
Q: Are you doing anything new in terms of technology this year?
A: We feel like we are almost everywhere we need to be in terms of technology. We upgraded our website last year. We were one of the first banks in the country to work with Intuit on responsive web, meaning our basic website automatically reformats itself if you’re looking at it on your computer or your tablet or your phone. We were actually one of their beta testers for that. We also just introduced a mobile banking app, which we’re quite proud of.
Social media is not exactly a technology investment. It’s more a marketing or a delivery channel. I’ve held off participating at the bank until I felt confident that we could do it capably. I don’t want a half-baked approach to social media. I want a consistent message and theme, and we’re working with our new marketing firm to do that. Social media in 2013 is definitely in the business plan.
Walter Dwyer’s Top Five Twitter Feeds:
- The Build Network – @TheBuildNetwork
- Wired Magazine – @wired
- Inc. – @Inc.
- Harvard Business Review – @HarvardBiz
- The Wall Street Journal – @WSJ
