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Anne Marie Cerami
Anne Marie Cerami
Title: Small Business Market Manager, Southern New England, TD Bank
Age: 59
Experience: 25 years
Like so many others in banking, Anne Cerami says she got into her field mostly by accident, when a recruiter suggested a commercial real estate gig at Shawmut Bank 25 years ago. Since then she’s held a variety of roles, including credit analyst, commercial lender and SBA manager. Now with TD Bank, Cerami is overseeing the addition of several new small business specialists in Massachusetts and Connecticut. She also serves on the advisory board of the microlender Accion.
Q: Tell B&T’s readers a little bit more about the new small business specialist position you’ve created at TD Bank.
A: About two years ago, TD Bank started this pilot program down in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and I believe there were six people identified to be specialists. Specialists provide support to a certain number of branches. Each specialist would have four or five stores and there are small business loan relationships that are tied to the store, so the specialist officer was assigned to the loans, and they took over the portfolio management part of it, which left the branch manager to still go out and do external business development.
The goal is for us to stay in touch with our customer four times a year on the lending side. We do an annual review for every single loan we have, but it didn’t seem to be enough and the branch managers have so much going on on a daily basis. If we could touch our business customers a little more frequently, what kind of experience would that be for them? And it’s been incredible.
Q: What kinds of skills or backgrounds do you look for in the new bankers you’re trying to onboard?
A: Part of that is being answered as I go through this interview process. The specialist is probably just a grade lower than what our branch managers would be and yet higher than the platform employees. Our job description is calling for four years of college-plus or relevant experience, and I’m finding more relevant experience than the four-year degree. What is interesting is that this job is going to be all about making outbound calls and also being mobile. So not only do we want them in the office doing calls, we want them out in the stores that they’re assigned to so they can see the customers and interact with them.
They’re a little more technologically proficient. And outbound calls, they’re not afraid to do that, which is great. They’re used to interacting by technology as opposed to face-to-face. I think the technology piece is a big part of it, but the people who seem to best fit this model have had some time, either in our banking network or a related type of service field. One person was a UPS manager. Now that’s like the hardest job in the whole world, right? Any type of good retail stores are where we attract some of our best employees. They have transferrable skills and they know how to make that customer connection.
Q: What kinds of trends or demands have you noticed among your small business clients recently?
A: Well, I can tell you the last few years were tough for small business owners. If a business had cash, they wanted to pay down their debt. They didn’t necessarily pay it off but they paid it down. So we had unscheduled payments. In a lot of cases they wanted to eliminate their debt. Those are the people who were strong and who did not want to take on any new debt.
But I can tell you in the last six to nine months that these businesses have waited as long as they can. It’s almost pent up demand. They need new equipment, they need credit.
We’ve also had a lot of success with health care financing – dentists, veterinarians, ophthalmologists. There seems to be an endless need for a dentist who wants to purchase another practice. If somebody wanted to do that and obtain financing, there were maybe one or two players in the market. TD Bank has worked really hard over the past five years to get specific products and policies and underwriting in place so that we can be very competitive out there. We’re starting to see a lot of momentum now.
For small business owners, we’re seeing a lot more startups and a lot more home-based businesses. The Internet has created entrepreneurs all over the place. Overnight they have a business and they’re generating revenues and what do I do with that? If they’re truly in too much of a startup phase and we can’t lend to them, this is where Accion comes in. Or for some businesses in a startup phase, a credit card is the best way to establish that credit and then once they’ve established credit we have a much better time getting that loan approved for them.
Cerami’s Top Five (Recent) Reads:
- “Hamilton,” by Ron Chernow
- “Titan,” by Ron Chernow
- “Blue Moon,” by Marilinne Cooper
- “Zero to Breakthrough,” by Vernice Armour
- “Nirvana in a Nutshell,” by Scott Shaw
