In the first episode of Building Interest, Leader Bank President Jay Tuli joins host Scott Barboza for a discussion on a range of topics including an introduction to the podcast, who we are as Leader Bank, and the Bank’s 20th anniversary.

Listen on Spotify     Listen on Apple

 

Episode Transcript

Scott Barboza:
Welcome to the Building Interest podcast, presented by Leader Bank, a series of free flowing conversations on a wide range of banking and money related subjects. We’re here to discuss all the issues that impact your financial future. Want to buy a home, start a small business, secure your financial future? Or maybe you want to maximize your savings ability or get your budget in order. We can help our talks with experts and influencers across the world of banking, we’ll set you in the right direction. I’m your host, Scott Barboza. Let’s get to it.

It is my distinct pleasure on our first episode of our podcast to have our president Jay Tuli with me here at our Seaport branch. Jay, this is such an exciting opportunity. I know we were just talking offline. You’ve done a couple podcasts before, but this is the first big podcast. I mean, how excited are?

Jay Tuli:
Awesome! Yeah, I never thought we’d have a Leader Bank podcast. So this is great. I’m excited.

Scott Barboza:
Jay, part of the reason why we wanted to do this this year, in particular, this is the 20th anniversary year of the bank, this is a really tremendous opportunity to talk about the accomplishments of the organization, I really want to get to this from a little bit of a personal perspective to to talk about, you know, part of what is so interesting about Leader in its progression as as an institution is that this is really a family based atmosphere, whether you’re talking about, you know, coming into one of the branches and talking to one of our, you know, bank attendants, or, you know, going all the way up to you and your father, just on a broad stroke, the 20th anniversary of this organization, talking about a year that we’re coming off of exponential growth, has this exceeded perhaps your expectations?

Jay Tuli:
Oh, it’s exceeded, you know, our wildest dreams. I mean, I remember being in the dinner table, when I was home from college, you know, and my dad would sometimes talk about this idea, he had to start a bank. And so it was it was, it was like, okay, yeah, maybe that will happen, maybe it won’t. And so now to be sitting here, 20 years later, you know, the bank started with six and a half million assets, a handful of team members. And now we’re $3 billion in assets, 420 team members, more importantly, still going strong after 20 years. And I think, you know, for me, seeing the longevity of this is so satisfying, because to be able to do something for this amount of time. It really takes a lot of passion from the whole team. You know, it’s rare that an organization lasts this long, and is still going strong and excited. You know, and so it’s, it’s amazing, it just, it means so much to me, and I’m still so excited to come to work every day.

Scott Barboza:
We don’t want to be too analytical about things. But really, when you go through the picture of of the growth that has occurred in the bank, especially in the last couple years here, even in you know, the height of the pandemic, and 2020 Leader has really grown by leaps and bounds. Talk about, you know, how much of a challenge was that to the team, but also how rewarding is it? As we’re moving into, you know, a no, everybody likes to use the word the new normal, but I feel like the new normal for Leader Bank is really entering into a new era as well.

Jay Tuli:
totally. The pandemic started a whole new chapter for Leader, I would say, some interesting statistics are 40% of our team members joined since the pandemic. So so we are essentially a new company since the pandemic started. And we’ve basically doubled in size since the pandemic started. So what’s interesting about that, is we’ve really taken this as an opportunity to redefine the organization and redefine the culture and the brand. And it’s not that we’re doing anything different per se, but I think we’re formalizing what were the roots and the fabric of the company. So we spent a lot of time last year and this year, thinking about culture, and brand. And I think the reason that’s really important is when when you have a distributed workforce that’s primarily working remote, these types of things are really important. And even more so 40% of the folks have never been in person to meet everybody else. So how we communicate and distinguish ourselves as a brand is really important. The other thing that’s been really fascinating is because of the remote from work. Well, let me back up. I would say one of one of our advantages as a company, I believe, is that we’re really nimble. We have an entrepreneurial spirit, right. So when there’s shifts in the market or there’s big things that change, I think we do a really good job of reacting very quickly. And going remote was one such big change, right. And with that we were able to throw out a traditional work barrier we had, which is only recruiting people in our backyard in Boston, right. And so what we saw as we were experiment, yeah, as we were working remotely, and we started recruiting people from all over the country, we have folks in 20 states now, we saw that we could not only be more productive, but we could get really specialized talent. So a combination of all these things that really propelled the organization last couple of years.

Scott Barboza:
But one thing that I think is also equally as important remained, even though as the workforce is transitioned to be more remote, it’s still very much a family, tight-knit. I mean, aside from the residential lending business, there’s also, you know, a community throughout the branches, and really being ingrained into those local communities around the greater Boston area.

Jay Tuli:
Absolutely. I mean, I think we, you know, authenticity as one of our brand pillars. Yeah. Right. And so I look at the culture that we have, as something that’s really prioritize is our authenticity as humans, as members of a community, as family, you know, me and me and my dad. But I think the longevity of the organization, and the family kind of imprint from the beginning has lasted in building values, right, and how we serve our clients and the kind of long term focus. I think, another kind of like, benefit of what you’re just describing on the kind of family structure side is where private bank, there’s not a lot of them out there. Right. So when we make decisions, we can really think, really long term, right, what’s best for the client?

Scott Barboza:
We got into it a little bit, but especially in the last year, when we’re talking about growth. What is your biggest accomplishment that you perhaps take away? I know, this might be a tough question, but in the last year, what do you think is the biggest accomplishment that this organization has worked toward in the last year?

Jay Tuli:
I think the the biggest accomplishment, I think is, despite all the growth, our client service levels have increased. And I think that’s a really hard feat. Usually, with a lot of growth, you take a little setback, right in client service. And in our case, our NPS scores are up, we’re actually innovating on new ways to exceed client expectations. And so what’s interesting about that is, is by achieving those, I actually am observing. Really high passion in our team members, right? They’re really excited to be here. They’re really excited to do what they’re doing. Right. And so it’s just like virtuous cycle so that that’s not something I would have expected. And it sort of just happened organically.

Scott Barboza:
I think it’s a real mark of that, as we’re setting up for this morning, seeing the staff or crew members come in this morning, we’re taping this on a Monday morning, everybody had a really positive, upbeat, sometimes you don’t see that in corporate culture, right? You’re coming in on a Monday, and it’s a little gray outside, we’re in the middle of winter here. So I think that really speaks very much to like we talked about before the brand pillar. How much of a important piece of the puzzle that is? I do want to take just a beat here to talk about the genesis of Leader as a whole beginning as, a residential mortgage organization, and then moved into Leader as it is today, that is, you know, equal parts. When we get into all the different facets, commercial lending, small business lending, I mean, a tremendous amount was obviously done during the pandemic through PPP loans, really helping again, that the local workforce, get out there and remain vibrant. Was that kind of a methodical approach to take the listenership people that might not be familiar with the organization? How really all the pieces came together under, you know, Leader as we know it today?

Jay Tuli:
Yeah. Great, great question. So I think when when you have a new entrant, well, let me back up. So in as far as banking goes, although we’re 20 years, we’re still the baby. You know, most banks been around for hundreds of years, right? So we’re still we’re still the baby. And in most mature industries when a new entrant comes, right, usually, the way they make their mark is they pick off a slice of the business that is not so integrated. So if you take financial services and you look at mortgages, you look at student loans, you look at credit cards, and now you can look at credit Right, you’ll see very specific players who’ve come in and own those facets. And the reason is they’re not really integrated. The thing that holds is like commercial lending commercial banking, because it’s a very integrated kind of relationship banking. So when we came, we really focused on Residential Lending, we still do today. But that is, that was a slice that you could kind of focus on that that is not integrated, and it was maybe forgotten, or stepchild of a lot of the banking business models during the financial crisis. Going back to the piece about being nimble. Sort of mortgages became like a dirty word. There was all this the housing crisis and things like that. So over the course of a year, we we grew our residential lending business, like tenfold. And so now we’ve used that as a platform to grow the rest of the bank, we keep, keep focused, focusing and growing on that. But as the bank matures, we’ve used the opportunity to build out the deposit network, our business banking capabilities, our commercial lending capabilities, and things like that.

Scott Barboza:
Now, obviously, we’ve made maintained our identity as, like I said, a community bank. But really, there’s some really exciting things going on in recent months. In the last year, partnerships really kind of taking on a more national view.

Jay Tuli:
When I think about being community oriented, and giving back to your community, I really view it as the organization having a soul, right, something beyond just a fact that’s making money. And so the definition of our communities will change over time, when we started, and we were just a very local neighborhood bank, then that neighborhood was a community. And it still is, but as we’ve grown, we’ve added more communities. And so you have to kind of look at all the different communities you have and what you do for all of them.

Scott Barboza:
For you and your family … I think sometimes in life, like anything else, mileposts give us kind of an opportunity to reflect and look back again. How often do you you and your dad and your family do that? How often does that happen? And just kind of think like, “Wow, we’re here.”

Jay Tuli:
I remember this one moment when my dad was getting some award. And together, we were going in Boston up this elevator. And I asked him, I said, you know, until my dad’s background is you know, he came from India in 1978. So I remember asking him, I said, “Did you ever imagine like, it would come to this?” You know, and he looked at me, he’s like, “No, I never imagined.” So for me that that was an a-ha moment. To watch him be like, you know, reflecting back.

Scott Barboza:
That’s powerful. I mean, that’s, that’s a true American story at its finest.

Jay Tuli:
Yeah. It’s and and I think the other interesting thing for me as an observer is, you know, he’s not a traditional banker.You know, I think, in many cases, he’s kind of an outsider to the banking industry. You know, even though I’ve been doing this 15 years, I don’t really view myself as a banker, I view myself as a entrepreneur, that happens to be banking, you know, but yet we do reflect on it from time to time. Probably like everyone in the world, you know, you don’t reflect enough, you don’t take enough time to sit back. And when you’re going through it, just keep thinking about the next thing. But I think when there’s opportunities to be with the whole team, and see how much the team has grown, that you really can’t help but be like, wow, and reflect on that.

Scott Barboza:
How challenging has it been? Or how easy is it been considering the amount of growth in headcount and team members to kind of really keep that special sauce going? And if you could take a minute to talk, you know, to the, to the workforce to to, you know, how vital a part of that journey have they been in really realizing that dream?

Oh, I mean, the team is the whole thing. You know, and I think every time we’ve had fundamental changes in our slope of growth, it’s because of how we’ve either added to the team or gotten the team to work together towards a common mission. You know, so when I sometimes I talk to startup leaders or other people and the whole thing I’m always say is like as a leader, all your time should really be focused on talent, right? How to get talent, how to nurture talent, how to identify. And that’s the whole thing. That’s so the team, the team is 100% the reason why we are where we are the the thing that I’ve had as a learning is lift, that’s the case. Why would good team member want to work with me? And so the the learning I’ve had over the last couple years, especially since the pandemic, is that we, as senior leadership, have to keep evolving ourselves. We have to keep growing, so that we have something to offer those work with us otherwise, like, they’ll pick someone, someone else to work with that can they can learn more from. So that’s not something you learned in school and stuff like that. And it’s like, almost like the learning just keeps going and go, you stay with it, It’s evolving, ever evolving.

Yeah. You know, before we go here, Jay, and again, thanks for your time, I think this is, you know, such a great kickoff to everything that we’re going to be offering here and getting into all the different facets of the Bank and really trying to make this of thoroughly engaging and informing offering. There’s a ton of podcasts out there, we understand that, but we really want to bring a different value to folks.Where do you see it going? You know, we’re 20 years in, where do you see this in 40, 50 years?

Jay Tuli:
Yeah, Scott, what I’m really excited about as a potential opportunity is if we keep on our current path, to become, you know, Boston or New England’s home-grown, leading financial services company, if you look in our marketplace, a lot of the biggest banks based mortgage lenders, credit card issuers, they’re national brands, right? And they are, you know, they’re not necessarily focused on this specific, you know, community. And I think if if we have that ability to be Boston’s own, with our clients, service values, being transparent, being able to think long term. I mean, that’s super exciting.

Scott Barboza:
Right, right. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it does come back to client service?

Jay Tuli:
Right. Absolutely.

Scott Barboza:
Jay, I want to, again, thank you for your time. We’re trying to do a little something different here. I hope that everybody out there joins us on this crazy journey as we go through an earthing and turning over rocks in the world of personal finance, banking investing. This is super fun. Jay, thanks so much for being a first part of this.

Jay Tuli:
And thank you, we’re happy to have you here.

Scott Barboza:
Thanks again, Jay.

For more information on today’s subject, visit LeaderBank.com. In addition to past episodes, you can also find our corresponding blog entries there for more insights. This podcast is a production of Leader Bank, NA. Equal Housing lender. Member FDIC. NMLS number 449250.