Mary Lynn Lenz is president and chief executive officer of Slade’s Ferry Bank in Somerset.
Mary Lynn Lenz began her career by walking down the street from the college she attended and applying to be a bank teller.
A few decades later, Lenz, an English and theater major in college, is the president and chief executive officer of Slade’s Ferry Bank, a $520 million publicly traded bank in Somerset that operates 10 branches in the South Coast area.
Lenz joined Slade’s Ferry in 2002 after serving as executive vice president and director of retail banking at Citizens Bank of Massachusetts for four years. She remembers telling Lawrence Fish, the Citizens chairman, president and chief executive officer, that she had a desire to become a CEO herself. Unfortunately, she realized the opportunity wasn’t available with her current employer and in March 2002, Lenz left Citizens. By September of the same year, she had her own office overlooking the coastal town of Somerset.
“[Slade’s Ferry] was an excellent bank with an excellent hometown reputation,” said Lenz.
Before being recruited by Citizens Bank, Lenz worked at Key Bank in Buffalo, N.Y., from 1989 to 1998 as a senior vice president. In her last two years at Key Bank, Lenz worked as a senior vice president of national small-business regional sales, where more than $1 billion in new business was generated.
When Lenz joined Slade’s Ferry in 2002, the bank’s total assets reached almost $399 million. Today, the bank has $513 million in assets. The total gross loan amount has increased from $265 million to more than $353 million in the same time period.
“They are pretty dynamic numbers,” Lenz said.
Constant Change
Lenz said some of the biggest challenges of her job include dealing with the constant change of the banking industry.
“It’s just change, every single day,” noted Lenz, who said she tries to lead people through the changes and still deliver shareholder value.
Lenz developed a three-year strategic plan and said she spends her days finding ways to better service her customers, while making Slade’s Ferry Bank a “great environment” for the employees.
Under Lenz’s direction, the bank also has rolled out Internet banking. Lenz said having a good technological platform is key to staying competitive.
“With all this merger mania, you have to be able to compete with other banks,” said Lenz. “We implemented a secure technology platform and launched online banking.”
In the last two years, Lenz also has been responsible for introducing a marketing campaign with advertisements and billboards for the bank, as well as introducing new product lines, revamping the checking accounts and assembling a leadership team.
“I can’t believe it’s only been two years,” said Lenz.
Despite all the major improvements, Lenz said Slade’s Ferry has the unique opportunity of remaining a community bank. She notes that people in the South Coast area are loyal to their hometown and their livelihood is there.
“There is an abundance of small businesses,” said Lenz.
Slade’s Ferry does considerable business with fishing fleets and fishermen, said Lenz.
“That’s a big, big business [here],” said Lenz.
Lenz also has immersed herself in the community since arriving in 2002. She is a member of the board of directors of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, the Fall River Mayor’s Council “Jobs for Fall River,” the SouthCoast CEO Council, the UMass/Dartmouth Educational Compact and St. Anne’s Hospital in Fall River. Lenz also serves as an advisory board member of the Gabelli School of Business at Roger Williams University and the UMass/Dartmouth Slade’s Ferry Business Research Center.
Most recently she worked with other community leaders to create Leadership SouthCoast, a community-based, selective leadership development program, and has been elected chairwoman of that organization’s founding board of directors.
Lenz is a graduate of Leadership Buffalo, which strives to unite local leaders from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and worked on further developing that program for the last year.
“There is a lack of emerging leaders,” she said.
While Lenz spends a majority of her time working in Somerset, she lives in downtown Boston. She moved to her Hub loft when she was working at Citizens Bank partly because she wanted to eliminate a long commute, but she also was looking to live in an urban area after spending many years in the suburbs.
In her college days, Lenz attended Niagara University for two years and New York State University, College of Buffalo for another two.
Lenz said she is glad she started as a teller and worked her way through to the top of the banking industry.
“I think that’s a pretty good run,” said Lenz.
