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Rockland Trust Co.’s upcoming acquisition of East Boston Savings Bank will involve a branch consolidation and job losses, but about 18 branch employees already know where their next job will be.
Metro Credit Union has entered into an agreement with Rockland Trust to acquire four East Boston Savings Bank branches, and all employees who want to continue working at the branches have been offered jobs with Metro Credit Union, Rockland Trust announced last week.
The upcoming merger will see 18 branches, including 16 East Boston Savings Bank locations, close. Robert Cozzone, Rockland Trust’s chief operating officer and executive vice president of consumer and business banking, told Banker & Tradesman that the bank had reached out to other institutions and, in the case of Metro Credit Union, received inquiries about acquiring the closing branches.
“Finding a home for employees that were ultimately going to be severed as a result of [the branch] consolidation was priority number one,” Cozzone said.
Metro Credit Union plans to relocate its Burlington and Melrose branches into East Boston Savings Bank locations and open new branches in the other two locations in Dorchester and West Roxbury. Rockland Trust will assign the applicable leases and physical branch facilities to Metro Credit Union, and the existing customer relationships from the branches will remain with Rockland Trust.
Cozzone said he hoped to see more of the remaining branches acquired with this type of transaction, but this could be the only one. He also praised the Metro Credit Union team for the cooperative way they worked with Rockland Trust.
He said three of the locations being acquired by Metro Credit Union were near existing Rockland Trust branches, while the location on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester was the smallest of East Boston Savings Bank’s four locations in that neighborhood.
“We can serve that market well with the remaining three locations,” Cozzone said.
The merger is expected to close in mid-November, Cozzone said, and the transaction with Metro Credit Union should be completed toward the end of November or in December. The new Metro branches would open in 2022.
Approximately 18 employees are expected to take jobs at Metro Credit Union, and they will still receive a full severance package from Rockland Trust, Cozzone said.
Cozzone declined to say how many total job losses will result from the merger, noting that the number gets smaller each week. More than 300 East Boston Savings Bank employees have been offered positions at Rockland Trust, including branch employees, back office staff and senior executives.
Rockland Trust has more job openings than Cozzone has seen in his 23-year tenure there, and as other employers have experienced during the pandemic, some employees plan to take time off and make decisions about their next career move.
For employees who do lose jobs as a result of the merger, Rockland Trust plans to hold a job fair featuring other institutions in the coming months.
