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Sushil Tuli
As Leader Bank celebrates its 20th anniversary throughout 2022, there are many lessons on leadership and banking to reflect on and learn from. When I came to the United States from India in 1978, I took an opportunity to work for a bank and learn the intricacies of the industry. I enjoyed the work immensely, and after a time I decided that I wanted to open my own business.
I formed a mortgage company in 1986 to help first-time homebuyers, low-income homebuyers, immigrants and others who were unfamiliar with the mortgage process or found homebuying unattainable find the right lending solution for their needs. Throughout the 1990s my mortgage company experienced great success, and I decided based on this success I wanted to open a bank that shared similar values and took an innovative and client-centric approach to banking.
When Leader Bank opened the doors of our first branch in East Arlington in 2002 as an entrepreneurial community financial institution dedicated to approaching banking differently, we had $6.5 million in assets and seven team members. At the time, I saw many other de novo banks opening – since then most of these have sold. Over the last two decades Leader Bank has grown into one of the most successful financial institutions in Massachusetts with $4 billion in assets and 422 team members working across 22 states.
A Strong Foundation
Leader Bank’s growth and success over the last 20 years is incredible to look back on, and is attributable to our steadfast board of directors, loyal clients and world-class team members.
When I started Leader Bank, I surrounded myself with a board of directors who complemented my own knowledge and skill set including entrepreneurs, banking professionals and a Harvard Business School professor. I also formed our executive team with the same strategy in mind – our Chief Operating Officer John Fanciullo (who recently retired) brought extensive knowledge about the banking industry and regulations to the table and our Chief Financial Officer Brian Taylor came to our team with tremendous experience managing bank finances.
When my son Jay joined Leader Bank in 2006, he in turn brought his own experience which has been instrumental to the bank’s success. Jay shared my vision of constant innovation to meet the needs of our clients, and since being named Leader Bank’s president in 2020 has cemented this as a core value for the bank moving forward.
This bedrock of support – along with an unwavering commitment to excellent client services, exemplary products and innovation – has allowed us to steadily expand our banking and lending services over the years and helped to ensure we are always a step ahead of our competition when it comes to providing our clients with the best solutions for their needs.
Remote Work Paid Dividends
While Leader Bank’s growth didn’t happen overnight, the last two years have truly marked a new chapter for the bank. More than 40 percent of our team members joined Leader Bank since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, doubling the size of our team, and many of these new team members work primarily remotely.
As a bank with an entrepreneurial spirit being nimble has always been one of our greatest attributes, and this remained true for us during a period of extraordinary growth over the last two years. When Leader Bank shifted to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic, we were able to react quickly and realize that by removing some of the traditional barriers of our hiring processes in largely recruiting team members from our backyard in the Boston area, we could bring in specialized talent from across the country.
With a more geographically distributed team, many of whom are not coming into a centralized office every day, we felt we had the opportunity to redefine and formalize Leader Bank’s culture and brand to ensure that our interactions both with our clients and with one another are consistent and in line with our values. This has paid dividends as our client satisfaction scores have actually increased as the size of our team has grown and we continue to develop new ways to exceed client expectations.
As we look forward to the rest of 2022 and beyond, Leader Bank continues to expand not only the size of our team but of the products we offer our clients. We will look to deliver more innovative solutions to the market like ZRent, ZDeposit and Leader Bank’s Digital Escrow, which we are offering in partnership with ZSuite Technologies. And with our new podcast, “Building Interest,” the bank’s brand is reaching more people than ever before with informative content about banking, lending and finance.
By remaining nimble and continuing to provide our clients with the most impactful solutions in meeting their banking needs, Leader Bank is poised for another 20 years of incredible success.
Sushil Tuli is chairman and CEO of Arlington-based Leader Bank.
