Within five years of joining Haverhill Bank, Thomas Faulkner had his sights set on becoming its CEO. This was back in the 1970s, a very different time in banking; Faulkner had cut his teeth as an auditor at a time when some banks still had pen-and-ink accounting systems. He got his start as assistant treasurer at the bank, and moved into its operations side. When his predecessor retired, Faulkner stepped in to the CEO role – at the tender age of 37. Now, with his retirement imminent, Faulkner is able to reflect on more than 40 years of work, including guiding the bank through two acquisitions, one of which was with a local credit union – a Massachusetts banking first.

Thomas R. Faulkner

Title: President and CEO, Haverhill Bank

Age: 66

Experience: 41 Years

So you took over the bank when you were 37 years old. You must have been younger than most of your peers.

Oh yeah. Today, I don’t know that you could do that. Banks are, of necessity, much larger and more challenging now… There are half as many banks as were around when I started. I think when I joined the industry there were 145 cooperative banks, and there’s less than 60 now, so obviously there are fewer opportunities.

What’s the plan for stepping down?

I’ll stay on as chairman, but I’ll no longer be running the institution directly as CEO. We’ve been very fortunate to find a very capable lender [successor Thomas L. Mortimer] who was born and brought up in Haverhill and worked in three different banks over the years. He comes very experienced and really knows the community, and the community knows him.

Had you been looking for a long time?

We had been trying to plan my retirement for more than three years, and that was what we saw as one of the opportunities that came from the merger with [Northeast Community Credit Union]. Their CEO was maybe six years younger than me, and we thought there’d be a successor there, and when that didn’t work out we started a search maybe three to four months ago. [Ed. Note: in December, former credit union CEO Peter L. DiBenedetto left his role as COO of Haverhill, saying he wanted to explore other career opportunities].

Are people nervous about the regime change?

Yeah, there’s a bit of anxiety. I’ve been here for so long, I was running this bank before many of the tellers were born.

I’ve heard that former CEOs who stay on the board have the urge to jump in and continue managing. Are you going to have to navigate that carefully?

I’m going to have to be very careful about keeping my hands off. I’m sure it’ll be an adjustment, obviously I have an emotional tie. When you run a business for almost 30 years, you want to see it do well. But if you have a new CEO, that person will be a CEO.

Has anyone else worked here as long as you have?

We had one receptionist here 49 years, we have an officer in the lending area that’s been here two years longer than I, and we had someone just retire, she was here 45 years. I was third in line in seniority. … We have a very stable cadre of people. Ten years in this bank, you’re still a rookie.

Is the bank a much different place than when you started?

Very much the same, and very different. Same people, same personality or culture, if you will. We run into customers in the supermarket – I actually had a woman come up to me, I was walking through the market with my wife, and she spent five minutes explaining all her financial problems and why she was going to be late with the mortgage payment. And I was very understanding, but she left and my wife said, ‘who was that?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, we have 2,000 mortgages.’

But she certainly recognized you, it seems. How have things changed?

A lot more products and services, and computers have enhanced things substantially. When I started, we used to have a company come in every three months and figure out the interest people earned. It used to be companies with groups of people that would go around with adding machines and figure out what interest should be paid on each of the accounts, and now obviously it’s compounded daily and whatever.

Compliance issues, it’s a whole separate field. I’m sure more than 30 percent of our operating expenses are driven by compliance. When I started we maybe had 10 or 12 forms in a mortgage folder, now we have 400 pages of documents in any given loan.

Haverhill Bank’s top five recent community activities:

1. Donated tent shelters to the Red Cross for Haitian relief.
2. Spotlighted the Katydid Foundation, a resource for autistic adults.
3. Donated money to local nonprofits that provide clothing and nursing facilities.
4. Donated American flags to local schools.
5. Opened its doors to a Haverhill Christmas event, featuring a Polar Express Christmas village scene.