Celsa Moreno-Baker

Rockland Trust is filling in its footprint with the addition of two new residential loan officers to its Greater Boston and North Shore market areas.

The bank recently added Celsa Moreno-Baker and Hong Ma to its residential lending team as senior residential loan officers.

Armando Carvalho, director of residential lending, said the bank needed to add more loan officers to its residential team to keep pace with its growth in the Greater Boston area.

“We’ve expanded north of Boston and we really didn’t have a strong loan officer presence in those areas,” he told Banker & Tradesman. “We’re continuing to increase the size of our loan officer population because we still have opportunities. We’re not fully staffed to the point where we feel there’s not sufficient opportunity to bring new loan officers on and service those communities.”

Moreno-Baker has 18 years of experience in the industry, most recently with Wells Fargo, and is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese. She will be based in Medford covering Framingham, Lynn, Revere, Fitchburg, Leominster, Malden, Everett and Salem.

Hong Ma

Hong Ma has more than 10 years of experience originating mortgages in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and previously owned Ample Finance Mortgage LLC. She most recently worked for Bank of America.

Carvalho highlighted Moreno-Baker’s multilingualism as a particular asset for breaking into the first-time homebuyer market, and he said the bank would like to add still more loan officers. Rockland Trust currently has 21 loan officers working in its residential division, and Carvalho said that 24 to 28 might cover the bank’s market area well.

“Those are not hard numbers,” he said. “It really is about making sure we have the right fit. We’re not looking to become a national mortgage company.”