“The smaller a company, the more varied the work,” says Bill Keane, the brand-new chief financial officer at $58 million, 4,300-member Seaport Credit Union in Salem.

Employees also have more of a voice about direction at a smaller institution, he added. Seaport, formerly St. Joseph’s Credit Union, has one branch, two ATMs and a membership field that includes those who live or work in Essex County.

That’s small compared to most Bay State banks, but Seaport is far from being the smallest credit union in the state, Keane noted, explaining that many municipalities have one set up just for their employees. But it’s just the right size for what he wants now.

His philosophies and those facts effectively sum up why Keane recently made a lateral move from Newburyport Institution for Savings, where he was CFO for 12 years. That organization’s asset size jumped from $555 million to more than $800 million last summer following its acquisition of Ipswich Co-Operative Bank.

Keane, 49, has worked in banking since he was in his early 20s. Like many of his peers who were around in the early 1990s, he has a good sense of the importance of what he does, and how bad it can get when things go wrong.

“The CFO does the financial statements and is personally responsible for them,” Keane said. Banks and credit unions carry insurance against errors and omissions by CFOs, but he still could be personally sued for a mistake.

Keane acknowledges his work life long has been ruled by when monthly and quarterly financial statements are due.

“Everyone wants to see them – regulators, the board, management,” he said. At Seaport, like other banks and credit unions, copies are printed out and left in the branch or posted online for public perusal.

Despite the scrutiny, Keane insists he has never lost any sleep worrying about work. But he must have gotten close in 1990, when he held the position of controller, second in line to the CFO, at Merchantsbank of Boston.

On May 15 of that year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. arrived at the $550 million bank unannounced, locked the door, audited its cash and ultimately shut them down.

Merchantsbank was the second of 26 Massachusetts banks and thrifts the FDIC closed in the early 1990s for making too many speculative real estate loans and not disclosing the risk. The agency closed more than 652 banks and thrifts nationally.

“The gray areas are where you would get into trouble,” explained Keane. Banks used to “capitalize” interest on commercial loans, for example, he said – converting interest owed toward principal in order to the make the loan appear current. That sort of practice is long gone, he said.

Keane left Merchantsbank when Bank of Boston acquired it in late 1990 following the shutdown.

“I didn’t want to work for a large bank,” he said, “so I went home [to New Hampshire].”

‘Democracy in Banking’

Shortly thereafter, he got a call from Worcester County Institution for Savings, which had recently won a bid to take over a failed bank in Gardner. He worked as acquisition financial manager for the bank and stayed through 1995, arranging the finances as the institution acquired four more failed banks.

Subsequently, Bank of Boston purchased WCIS. Keane left, again choosing against working for a larger bank. He soon found a new home at Newburyport Institution for Savings, where he remained until January.

But as that bank grew, his responsibilities again became narrower. Wanting to have an effect on the direction his employer was taking, he said, he knew it was time for his next move.

Keane, who began his career in 1983 at BankEast in Manchester, N.H., noted that his career track has taken him in a direction different from most – from a commercial bank to a stock-owned savings bank to a mutual savings bank and today, to his first credit union professional. But he believes the trajectory has led him to “the truest form of democracy in banking” – a credit union, where members have the opportunity to vote on the institution’s future and where he feels he can make a difference.

Now that he’s overseen the finances behind five acquisitions at financial institutions for which he’s worked, Keane could be called something of an expert in that area. He declined to speculate on whether something like that is in Seaport’s future, but predicted it’s unlikely.

“The question regarding mergers has to be, ‘why?’” he said. “Are you getting bigger just to be bigger? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should."n