At United Bank, ‘create your balance’ is more than our pledge to customers to provide balance to their financial life,” said Dan Flynn, executive vice president and COO of wholesale banking. “They’re words our employees embrace when it comes to balancing their own professional obligations with their commitment to their families and the communities they serve.”

Tony Liberopoulos, senior vice president and regional commercial banking officer, personifies those words, according to Flynn. He embodies United’s key employee cultural attributes: “he’s friendly, caring and respectful to co-workers and in our communities.” And that’s not effusive nomination praise, Flynn said; it’s how Liberopoulos lives his life.

Liberopoulos has spent his professional life in community banking and even though he doesn’t do a lot of large-dollar deals in the Western Massachusetts market, he knows that every loan his team makes is extremely important to his clients, and to the community.

“It’s more rewarding,” he said. “Oftentimes you’re dealing with decision-makers who have a true, vested interests in their companies.”

Liberopoulos lives in the community he works in, and always has. He said that keeps him accountable in a business that might seem like it’s about numbers, but that is really about people.

“My job is to make friends,” Liberopoulos said. “This is a people business. Clients do not have to come here. There aren’t a ton of new businesses coming to the market. We deal with existing businesses and they have other options. A lot of bankers out there think they’re doing a customer a favor; we look at it as customers doing us a favor by banking with us. Look, our bank is $6.7 billion in assets. We make local decisions, we can get things done quickly. When you want to do business you don’t have to fly to another state to get it done, you go over to the next office.”

Prior to joining United in 2015, he was “already a well-known figure and trusted banker in the Springfield region through his previous work at People’s United Bank, Fleet Bank and BayBank,” Flynn wrote in his nomination. “But it’s far more than his professional reputation that has earned him the utmost respect in Massachusetts. It’s the selfless commitment, personal sacrifices and unwavering devotion to the community that separates him from others.”

Liberopoulos is also involved with local chapters of the Ronald McDonald House and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He said he sees it as an extension of the work he does in community banking.

“I tell people I love my job,” he said. “It’s a great feeling when you drive though a city and see all the people you’ve helped out. Maybe they started out with one or two employees and now they have 15 or 20. It’s a great thing to be a part of.”

Tony Liberopoulos

by Jim Morrison time to read: 2 min
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