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Mary Noons
President and Chief Operating Officer, The Washington Trust Co.
Age: 61
Industry experience: 35 years
The Washington Trust Co. is known as the oldest community bank in the United States, but no woman has ever held the title of president and chief operating officer of the bank. That will change this week when Mary Noons steps into the role held by Mark Gim. Noons started her banking career in Connecticut before joining Westerly, Rhode Island-based Washington Trust in 1992. Previously the bank’s senior executive vice president and chief retail lending officer, Noons will begin her new role on April 26.
The $6.6 billion-asset Washington Trust does commercial lending in Greater Boston, has a wealth management office in Wellesley, and does mortgage lending out of loan production offices in Braintree, Burlington, Sharon and Wellesley.
Q: What is your reaction to becoming Washington Trust’s first female president and chief operating officer?
A: It was very surprising. It was not something that was ever on my to do list. Mark is retiring; he’s younger than I am. I didn’t anticipate that. I’m really honored that they asked me to step into this role. One of the things that our team has been able to do in the retail lending area is something that the whole bank can benefit from, which is a really process-oriented way of conducting the business. What I mean by that is that you take a look at what you currently do, and then you see if it makes sense. It’s a very disciplined approach. Throughout the whole thing, you have to look at it from the customer’s viewpoint. It’s arrogance to think that if you create it, then the customers are just going to adapt to how you’re going to approach them. The best way to do it is see what a customer needs, what products do they need, how do they want to be approached, how do they want to approach us. That’s the sustainability factor.
Q: What are some of your goals in your new position?
A: I certainly don’t feel like I need to fix much, because we have a strong culture here. People really feel valued and cared about, and that translates into how they care about a customer and their job. I really am just trying to hone in on how we can make things better, just at the margins. This is something every company – banking, non-banking – could benefit from: Just reevaluate how you’re doing things.
Q: Does Washington Trust have plans for more branches?
A: We are building three branches in Rhode Island. We’ve been in Rhode Island for 222 years, and we’re still not through the whole state.
Q: Does the bank have plans to expand in Massachusetts?
A: No branching right now. We’re happy to continue our branching in Rhode Island, and three in a year is a lot. We do quite a bit of commercial lending – and have for years – in Massachusetts, as well as in Connecticut. There are certain business lines that can operate without a branch location, and those business lines have already been doing business in those two states pretty significantly for years. As far as the mortgage offices, I think we have capacity in each of those offices to just add to the existing framework.
Q: Without branches in Massachusetts, how does Washington Trust keep its name out there when seeking commercial lending opportunities?
A: We do a lot of commercial real estate, for example, in the Greater Boston area. It’s a big area, but it’s very small when it comes to how people talk to each other – like a small community. If you do a job and you do it very well, then that’s your best form of advertising. There’s almost not enough money that we could put in our marketing budget to penetrate the Boston market from afar. It really comes from the connections that the commercial lending team has made. Same thing with mortgage. If you do a deal and you do it very well, very speedy, very competently – and the referrer is confident and kept abreast of the progress – and it’s a short timeline, that person is going to tell somebody else who tells somebody else. We have very little advertising that we do in Massachusetts, but our name on the mortgage side is very well known. Same with commercial lending. Same with wealth management. You find your communities and your niches, and then word spreads from there.
Q: What has Washington Trust seen since last month’s bank failures?
A: I think they shocked everybody. [Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank] were not community banks, and we’re a community bank. I like to tell people we’ve been around for 222 years, and we survived the War of 1812, the Great Depression and all the World Wars. We’ve seen a lot in that time, but we remain focused on the core things that we do. Banks like Silicon Valley, they had a completely different balance sheet; they had a completely different focus. We also take a different approach than apparently they did to asset and liability management. We meet on a regular basis and have all sorts of shock tests. And I think most, if not all, community banks do it that way. I’ve sat in [asset-liability committee] meetings for the better part of 22 years or so. And when it gets to some of those analyses, it’s like, why do they do all this? This is exactly why. We take it seriously.
It was kind of a validating thing for us that sometimes these places, like Signature and Silicon Valley, can look very attractive in what they’re doing, and it’s very different than how we conduct our business. We’re very good at sticking to our knitting and making sure that we conduct the bank as safely and pragmatically as possible without being stodgy. We’re very strong, we’re very well-capitalized. We have very solid performance metrics, and we have had that for decades, many decades – centuries. We know what we’re doing; we do it well; and we care about what we’re doing. And that resonates in our market.
Noons’ Five Favorite Travel Destinations:
- Ireland
- Paris
- Hawaii
- Vermont
- Bermuda
