Pat Murray and John Silva
CEO and Chairman of the Board and President, Bristol County Savings Bank
Industry experience: 38 and 25
Age 64 and 57
Pat Murray and John Silva just took a big leap together as their bank faced one of the biggest tests a community bank can face: CEO succession. Murray, president and CEO since 2012, handed off is president role to Silva at the mutual bank’s annual meeting. Silva will add “CEO” to his roles upon Murray’s retirement in December. Murray stepped down as president in May and will remain chairman of the BCSB board of directors for the next nine years.
Silva joined the bank in 2016 after a number of roles at Boston-based Santander Bank and its predecessor banks including senior vice president and New England regional director in its business banking department. Prior to being named president and chief banking officer at BCSB, he was the bank’s executive vice president and chief lending officer, executive vice president of commercial lending and senior vice president of commercial lending.
Q: Can you discuss the importance of succession planning?
Murray: Succession planning is one thing that Bristol County Savings Bank has done extremely well. Succession planning, for me, started back in March of 2012. We put a group of people together. A couple of them also had the shot at becoming the next CEO 12 years ago and we put them into positions to allow them to prove themselves. Back in 2012, the board thought that myself, coming up through the operations finance side of the bank, and Len Sullivan, who came up through the lending side of the bank, together we made the perfect CEO. Then Lenny retired on me eight years later, so that’s when we recruited John. Through the interview process, Lenny and I got the impression that, based on John’s background and how he went from his career as a community banker all the way up to a big bank and then back into community banking, he was a community banker at heart. John became a potential successor to myself eight years ago when he joined us.
Silva: I appreciate the board and Pat for recommending we do internal talent [when starting to search for Murray’s replacement in 2022], but it wasn’t like a walk-on. We hired a consultant and we went through the full rigmarole as if [the other candidates and I] were coming from the outside. We got to do the psychometric testing – actually three different tests – and a 360 interview, and a full presentation to the board. There was an appreciation for the process because what ended up happening was fair. If I wasn’t chosen, I pledged to support Dennis [Leahy] and Dennis pledged to support me in the same way we’re going to be working together.
Q: How do you feel rising through the ranks helped you in your leadership roles?
Murray: I actually worked my way through college working for a bank and I started in the mailroom of a bank back in Brockton. That experience, working my way up through the ranks and then going to school and coming back as controller [at BCSB in 1986], it taught me a life lesson as to what it’s about to treat people well, because you never know where their background was. It also taught me to put all your faith in people that work for the bank, because if you can get them to think outside the box and think about ‘How do I treat the customer best?’ that’s how you grow a community bank. When I started the bank was below $200 million in assets and today we’re $3.1 billion.
Silva: As Pat says, you’ve got to treat everybody well. Santander was a global bank, and when I came here, I brought the best of that world – of the sophistication and the lending and all that – and took the best of this world – the white-glove service, the building relationships the focus on the community – and we’ve taken it to the next level here. As we grow, we’ve got to make sure that we develop the talent below us. That goes back to succession planning. You know, when I became chief lending officer, not that I knew I was going to go to CEO but I was developing my replacement [in that lending role.]
Q: What’s the future of banking look like to you? What’s Bristol County Savings Bank’s future look like?
Murray: I cannot remember the last time I actually did a transaction at a branch. I go into branches all the time just to say ‘hi’ to people and things like that, but [digital is] the wave of the future. We’re going to have to compete against that, but mutual banks, community banks like us are going to have to continue to compete on relationships with people. People helping people, that’s really our mantra. In this particular region, they bank with Bristol County Savings Bank because of the people that work here. How do we balance that with the new way people want to do their banking? That will be the challenge, but it’s a challenge that we can manage. That’s what community banks do.
Silva: Obviously, the future of community banking is challenging. There’s a lot of headwinds. You got the profitability, the [net interest margin] compression, you have the management transition, the succession planning – you’re going to see that play out a little bit more in the mutual banks – cyber risk, credit risk, talent risk, the regulatory risk. There’s a lot going on. We’ve got to be cognizant of the changing banking environment and look for ways to leverage technology to improve the customer experience and the operational efficiencies that come with that to compete effectively against the big players.
Chase is coming in, and they’re trying to make it really, really difficult for the community banks. But if we focus on what is really core to us and being there for our community – Bristol County Savings Bank is always named one of the top philanthropists in the state and we punch way above our weight class putting about $3 million annually into the communities that we serve, going a long way to make them better places to work and live – yeah, it’s challenging, but I think we can do it.
Murray’s Five Favorite Activities
- Spending time with family and friends
- Spending time at his home in Naples, Florida
- Traveling with his wife
- Tailgating at Patriots games
- Volunteering in the community
Silva’s Five Favorite Activities
- Family time
- Being outdoors
- Traveling
- Fishing
- Community involvement
