Anne Tangen
President and CEO, BankFive
Years experience: 41
For 30 years, Anne Tangen had served clients at Fidelity and building State Street Bank’s wealth management unit into one that generated $90 million per year, until she found herself drawn to community banking – and becoming a chief executive at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. After her successful wealth management career, Tangen entered banking as a board member of Swansea’s BayCoast Bank, before becoming the chief operating officer of The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod in Hyannis for six years. Tangen is now with Fall River-based BankFive as its first woman president and CEO, having held that role since April 2020.
Q: What were your realizations during the last three years, including from your shift from wealth management to community banking?
A: I think that the consistency between wealth management and community banking is that every customer is important. Every relationship matters. You garner your reputation and guard it with everything that you have because you can’t afford to lose a customer.
The transition through the pandemic feels like it was a long time ago. Maintaining that trust with customers as you were shutting lobbies, there was uncertainty of what was going to happen and how safe customers could be working with you. When I think back, there were drive-up-only or appointment-only setups, and two people were only allowed in the lobby. We had teams A and B servicing the lobby so if someone got sick, we send in the B team because you had to quarantine everybody else.
The other thing was the tremendous pivot towards technology solutions. People couldn’t come into the branch so the use of our online technology skyrocketed, and it has continued growing. Online banking usage increased 20 percent at the beginning of the pandemic, then leveled out. People who were not using it at all were registering and using it. We see that usage continue and new bank account customers are adding online banking to their service [package] at a regular pace. Probably the biggest thing that we’ve learned is that the conversations are different in the branches now.
Q: How did those in-branch conversations evolve?
A: People go to branches for problem resolution. They ask, “How do I fix my problem with our credit report?” “How do I fix my problem with a payment transaction that went bad?”
The other one is for financial advice. At the point where interest rates were so low during the pandemic, people would ask, “Should I refinance my mortgage?” “Is now the right time as rates started to go up?” Those conversations are ongoing in the branches now, where I don’t think they were happening before; [customer interactions] were more transactional in the past.
Q: How did the challenges evolve for a community bank like BankFive during those two years? How did the bank weather the storms?
A: Every bank faced the banking crisis in March, with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank really rocking the trust and faith in banking institutions, and people were nervous.
That goes back to the parallels between wealth management and community banking: A trusted relationship with a customer is your primary goal. When customers get nervous, that’s when you need to step in. We did an awful lot of outreach educating customers that we have a [Massachusetts] Depository Insurance Fund that carried the insurance for their accounts above the $250,000 FDIC limit to whatever they had on deposit.
There were inflation worries with people trying to buy a home. Now they can’t afford it, and first-time home buyers were priced off the market. We looked at what kind of programs could we put in place that help with down payments. We are working with the community and our customers, and trying to figure out how to help them achieve their goals.
Interest rates climbed, and it increased our cost of funds. All of our raw materials went up in price, but all of our fixed bids or loans haven’t changed, so it puts a lot of pressure on our profitability this year. We made sure we had good solid financial practices and balance sheet strategies that would help us out, and financial advisors really helped us reposition our balance sheet. I feel like we’re going to end the year in really good shape, but not the way we traditionally make money.
Q: What are the changes that you have made so far as BankFive’s first woman president?
A: I don’t know whether it was because I was a woman or because of the circumstances that had arisen in the bank, but we were able to reposition people in the executive team. I promoted our chief product officer to chief operating officer. Our new chief of human resources is a woman. I also brought in a new head of technology – a new CIO – who was also a woman. I am comfortable and confident with giving positions of power to these women who could step up and do their job. Those are the kind of core capabilities that can guide the organization in which we can leverage all those individual areas of expertise.
We developed a money market product that actually fluctuates based on a market rate. We realized the money was coming out of our money market accounts to other brokerage houses. But with this new product, customers don’t have to shop their money market fund because they know it’s going to move with the market. I know that other financial institutions are doing it, but I don’t know of other banks that are doing it.
We also put in new reporting systems and tools. When we saw the liquidity crisis happening in March, people were trying to look at posts in real time. With the new systems, we will be able to see not only what is coming in or going out, but also where it is going, and be able to drill right down to from which branch it was leaving. If we saw any concern about a branch or a customer base, we [would know] how to address it right away.
Q: What are some of the concrete plans that you envision for BankFive moving forward?
A: We’re excited about some renovation projects in our branches. We’ve been investing in refreshing the environment in which our employees work to make it more attractive for our employees to come back to and to make it more updated for our customers. The appearance of our branches matters, and it is part of the customer experience if we are going to lead as a technology-convenient bank.
This was paused during the pandemic, but we want to continue our hands-on community involvement by being able to take trips again to high schools for our financial literacy programs. We are also opening up two new branches, and seeing expansion in our services and capabilities so we are really excited about that.
Tangen’s Five Favorite Activities
- Skiing at Mt. Sunapee in New Hampshire
- Boating on Buzzards Bay
- Reading her favorite book, “Atlas Shrugged”
- Watching her granddaughters’ musical performances
- Teaching her grandkids how to ski
Correction 9:50 a.m. Jan. 5, 2024: The introduction to this interview has been updated to correct two inaccuracies in its description of Tangen’s biography. Her role at Fidelity did not concern wealth management. She was chief operating officer of The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod for six years.
