Thanks to good timing, Jim Brown got an early start in banking and has been in the industry for his entire professional career. He’s also worked in the same neighborhood the whole time. Here, he talks about the changes the industry was going through when he was a fresh-faced college student, and what changes are challenging the industry today.

James Brown
Title: Executive Vice President, Chief Lending Officer, Boston Private Bank & Trust Co.; Boston
Age: 46
Experience: 25 Years

At 46, being in banking 25 years means you started young.

I started working in banking in Boston in 1987, 25 years ago, for the then-Shawmut Bank, right before it was bought by Connecticut National Bank. So it was the old, old Shawmut, that some people remember.

Fleet?

Nope. I never worked for Fleet. I was at Shawmut for five years, until ’92. Shawmut, God bless them, paid for my MBA at Boston College, nights. I started at Shawmut in June 1987, graduated from college in 1987, and had to skip a trip to Europe with my buddies because I got into their training program, and for whatever reason, I liked school. So, I was only there about a month and I applied to BC and BU and a couple others to go back for my MBA nights, and got in and decided to go to BC. So, I worked at Shawmut, lived in Allston, like everybody. Took the Green Line in to Park Street and out to BC and back to Allston pretty much every day for three-and-a-half years. When I got my MBA in ’91, I almost went to Bank Boston, but ended up going to State Street, which was probably the best career decision I ever made in my life. I worked at State Street, right here at 225 Franklin St., from ’92 to ’99 when they sold the commercial portfolio to Citizens.

What was it like being in banking at such a young age? Were you surrounded by other people your age? Did banks still have robust management training programs?

I was really lucky. I went into the last of the programs. There was a really great program at Bank of New England, and at Shawmut and Bank Boston, and it literally ended the year or the year after I went into Shawmut. There were 23 people in the program, 13 kids right out of undergrad and 10 employees who had been sponsored into the program who were young, but might be five- to 10-year employees. For them it was a big deal. It was a really prestigious thing for them to get into the program, and they were put together with a bunch of young punks right out of school. But those were unbelievable programs. It was two years of three-month rotations where you’d go to commercial real estate, then you’d go to international trade banking, then you’d go to correspondent banking, you’d go to corporate banking. At the end of the two years, you’d end up in the large corporate banking group.

Since then, how have banks compensated for not having those programs?

I don’t know that they have adequately, to be honest with you. I think it’s one of the things most leaders wrestle with: Whether they are doing as good a job developing people as people did developing them. It’s a challenge because the relationship between employer and employee, especially in banking, is a little different than it was a generation ago. If you went into banking, you were expected to work for that company maybe for your entire career, and I don’t think either party looks at it exactly that way anymore. We try here, and I’ve always tried to devote myself to help people and give them opportunities. All the things people did for me, I try to do for our employees here.

Did you come to Boston Private in your current position?

No, I was hired by Jim Dawson, who works for our holding company now, but who was the chief lending officer at the time. He hired me, I was a C&I lender, and he hired me to build really from scratch a C&I group here at the bank. At the time, it was a very small group with a $175 million loan portfolio. It was mostly commercial real estate.

What are some of the top challenges in that space now?

The economy is the biggest challenge for everybody, because the name of the game for everybody, the most important thing for any lender, is to find the right balance supporting the client, advocating for the client in the bank and advocating for the bank. It kind of goes right down the middle between supporting the client and protecting the bank, and that’s a challenge in a difficult market. If you’re not going to support the client, you shouldn’t bother banking them.

What are some of the things that come into play in that relationship?

The biggest thing is that you have to have a relationship with them, and that usually means you have to have a relationship with the other advisors in their life… their lawyer, almost always their accountant. You have to get to know them, and that’s something bankers have done for a long time, but it’s always the challenge you face. If you own a business, the people who make the decisions that affect you, you want to know them. You want to call them and you want them to pick up the phone. If you want them to come out and see you, you want them to be there. That’s actually the fun of the job. I enjoy it.

Jim Brown’s Five Favorite Things About Boston’s Post Office Square:

1. I’m old enough to remember when it was that old garage, which was the most horrific thing imaginable. It was the ugliest thing in the city, now the park is beautiful. I don’t take the beauty of it for granted at all.
2. The familiarity of it. I really enjoy that space. I worked in One Federal. I worked in International Place. I work here. I’ve spent 25 years of my life in this two or three blocks.
3. I appreciate the fact that when I walk across the park, I bump into people in the same space I did when I was 21 years old.
4. It’s a great place to meet with people, especially employees. You have a very different meeting when you say, ‘Let’s go have a cup of coffee in the park.’
5. The garage itself. I have young kids. We have clients. It makes my life easier. I can get out of here and go see a client in Cambridge and get right back, or if I’ve got a kid who has a baseball game, I can get in my car and go to it.