Episode Transcript

Greg Farber:
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 are here to discuss all the issues that impact your financial future. Do you want to buy a home, start a small business or secure your financial future? Or maybe you want to maximize your savings ability, 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, Greg Farber. Let’s jump right in. Welcome back to the building Interest Podcast. I’m Greg Farber and I have the pleasure to be joined by Cheryl Glantz Senior Vice President of Commercial Lending at Leader Bank. Cheryl, thank you for joining me today. How are you?

Cheryl Glantz:
Doing great today.

Greg Farber:
Great to have you. So I’ve been in and around banking for nearly 25 years. And I’ve been involved with a number of different departments, but never commercial lending. As the Senior Vice President of Commercial Lending. Can you describe for our listeners what it is you do?

Cheryl Glantz:
Sure, I’ll share that with you and kind of share what commercial lending is on a whole. So commercial lending involves many facets of different assets. So we’ll do multifamily lending, we’ll do lending to retail lending to industrial, we’ll do construction lending, we’ll also do what’s known as C&I lending commerce and industry, which is business loans, and that is pretty much specifically what I do at Leader Bank.

Greg Farber:
You mentioned different loans to different kinds of businesses, commerce construction industry, can any business come looking for a loan, regardless of what they do? Or can you describe what constitutes a commercial client? For you? Are there certain criteria that have to be met? And how is this different from making residential loans or mortgages on homes?

Cheryl Glantz:
So it makes it customer, I’m gonna do a little bit and just say differentiate a little bit from residential. So the residential world is slightly one to four, residential lending. On the commercial side, we also can get involved in the one to four residential lending. But the difference would be that the asset could be held in many different types of legal owning entities, and LLC, a realty trust. So that could also be commercial lending. But most typically, it would be apartment buildings, and office building, retail, industrial. So forth, as I previously mentioned.

Greg Farber:
Are you saying that commercial lending can go beyond sort of this perhaps traditional mindset, that you have to be a specific kind of business? People might think of retail stores or corporations as your typical businesses. But you might have, like you said, a real estate LLC, managing apartment buildings, which is not a brick and mortar business.

Cheryl Glantz:
Correct. So that would be investment, real estate, kind of versus lending to a business and owner occupied business?

Greg Farber:
Oh, all right. Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying that. So I’m curious to know how long you’ve been with Leader Bank handling these types of loans and clients. And as the Senior Vice President of Commercial Lending, what is your day to day look like? Are you strictly working on existing loans and managing those relationships? Or do you have a chance to always explore new clients and lending needs?

Cheryl Glantz:
So I’ve been with Leader Bank just shy of 11 years now. And so I have a very large portfolio. So my day involves both the management of those assets, as well as working with the borrowers for those loans. And additionally, reviewing new loan opportunities.

Greg Farber:
That’s great that you’ve been with the bank for such a long period of time and can really build out those relationships. Now, in all the years that you’ve been at the bank, has the commercial lending space changed, for example, have the types of clients that you’re seeing changed, or maybe the overall marketplace or even an evolution within how commercial lending operates as a team?

Cheryl Glantz:
Well, the department as a whole has changed dramatically. So when I first joined the bank back in 2011, there were just about two of us in the department. Both Matt Pierce and I, and we pretty much handled everything. And then over the years Leader Bank has grown tremendously. And now to date, there has been six new lenders that have been added to the department, as well as the credit underwriting team has expanded, as well as the loan administration team.

Greg Farber:
Wow, that is impressive growth. You mentioned it was just you and Matt, when you first came aboard to join the Leader team, given the growth in the department that you mentioned over the last decade. Would you say you’ve also grown the variety and types of loans that you’re making? Are you reaching out to other types of commercial entities? And does that mean you’re able to serve more clients in our area?

Cheryl Glantz:
So the way lending works is, the more the bank to keep it somewhat a little bit simplistic. The more the bank grows, the more your legal lending limit grows as well. So how much the Bank is allowed based on its its capital is allowed to lend to any one individual. So that has grown from roughly 5 million to nearing 50 million. So we still stick by our same credit integrity that has not changed since the day I joined the Bank. What has changed is now we have the capacity to loan more to one individual so we can do a lot more relationship lending and grow with one person. So if they we’ve done a couple of say apartment buildings they had, and now they buy more, we have that capacity to continue to grow with them.

Greg Farber:
I like that as the needs of the businesses you serve have grown, the bank and your team have kept up and growing also to ensure that whatever their needs evolve to the bank is ready to help. I want to focus on a word I’ve said a few times now relationship. You just mentioned as part of another term relationship lending. And we’ve often heard that in any area where you’re making sales, you want to have relationships with your client. What is the relationship lending in your world? Does that mean? What does that mean for the listeners?

Cheryl Glantz:
So to me, what it means is your you’re developing a business relationship with a particular borrower, and then they look to you as one of the COI or circle of influence. So I will have borrowers call me, they’re out there looking at a new building, any type of building, and they’re calling emailing me to ask my opinion, on what I think of it as an acquisition.

Greg Farber:
So a good client relationship is one of trust and support or advice. So as their business grows, they know that they have you in their corner to give them advice, discuss their business’s direction and needs, and then ultimately to support them if they need additional loan funds or need to talk about a business venture that they might be interested in.

Cheryl Glantz:
And as I want to, as Leader has grown, we, the bank itself has added so many capabilities, we are very state of the art as well when it comes to the retail side. So we also grow a deposit relationship with them. And we’re in now with Z suites, we’re able to also assist them with rents, if it’s an apartment building deposits, security deposits, monthly rental. So it’s been the capacity to continue to grow the relationship as we add more capabilities at Leader, it’s given that opportunity,

Greg Farber:
I understand. So the relationship goes beyond just the customer needing a commercial loan or assistance from your department, but maybe other financial products and tools that could make their business grow overall in other areas, like you said, and deposit relationships or things like that, and how we’re able to maybe provide those additional supports to those businesses. Now, as we all know, the last couple of years have been very different. And we can’t ignore how business changed ever since the COVID 19 pandemic. I can imagine you were very customer facing in building those relationships we just talked about. And suddenly we’re all working from home, but with your team and the clients themselves.

Cheryl Glantz:
Once COVID-19 pretty much took over the world lending as we knew it came to a halt. Business businesses were being required to close any you know, hotels. It impacted Retail stores, impacted tenants and industrial buildings, literally, we became this overnight remote world.

Greg Farber:
Indeed, we all heard in the news about businesses that had to close either temporarily or even permanently in some cases. Can you walk us through a little bit what that time looked like and how your department was able to adapt to this sudden almost overnight change in our work environment. I can imagine that as a result of all this, many businesses would quickly have a cashflow problem, and they would actually need some additional lending to be able to meet their costs and obligations.

Cheryl Glantz:
Absolutely. And so the banking industry aligned with the SBA stepped up to be able to get to them what’s known as PPP loans, which payment protection loans. And it was to enable them to keep workers on the payroll and allow businesses to open in whatever capacity that they could. So in order to get but these loans were needed immediately to your point, Greg, cashflow came to a standstill. And so Leader Bank, it being a community bank, and always on the outreach to businesses. We have great internal knowledge what I call supply chain. With that comes largely from our residential department, which Leader Bank has been long well known for. So we were able to enact that quickly. The entire commercial loan team pulled together immediately started to process these PPP loans, because we all learned how to do it together. We created scalability so that we were able to get the dollars in the hands of the needing borrowers very efficiently. So it wasn’t just being able to set up the process, but set up the process efficiently enough so people could get their loans. And I believe this statistic is correct. I believe if we were not the first we were one of the first Massachusetts banks to put PPP funds in the hands of borrowers.

Greg Farber:
That sounds fantastic. What a team effort Cheryl. Now what I’m hearing you say though, is that these customers because they were able to get these loans, were then able to either stay open or keep their cash flow from drying up. Do you find that thanks to this program and leaders quick action that a lot of these businesses are they still around today and viable

Cheryl Glantz:
apps salutely So we can’t say all but I would say the vast majority. So part of the PPP loan process also was delivering the loans. But these loans are also they had the ability to be fully forgiven. So we’re also doing the forgiveness component of it. So many times in talking to these borrowers, they share very heartwarming stories of what this PPP loan meant to their business at the time, you know, they were in such great need.

Greg Farber:
Cheryl, you mentioned something you called the forgiveness component, can you just share with our listeners what it means for a loan to be forgiven?

Cheryl Glantz:
So most loans that we know it, you take out a loan, and you’re required to pay it back? You’ve set documents every month, or as it’s turned? Yeah, absolutely. There’s terms and conditions that you must meet. What the government did was to put the money in the hands of those in need, and tell them as long as they applied the money accordingly, as required by the program, then they could apply. There was a certain period of time they could apply to get full forgiveness of the loan.

Greg Farber:
So then if I got this right, when a loan is forgiven, they no longer have to make payments to repay the loan. So we stepped in. And to use sort of a cliche phrase, we acted as a lifesaver for these businesses, we were able to leverage this program from the government and offer these Paycheck Protection Program loans. And then if the businesses like you said follow the terms and conditions, then ultimately they didn’t have to repay that. And they can make it through without incurring additional debt through the pandemic period.

Cheryl Glantz:
Correct. Correct. And have another another probably statistics helpful of us being community bank, I believe I’m pretty close to being correct. We about 85% of our loans, were for less than 150,000. So we really directed to the small business owner.

Greg Farber:
Wow, that is, that’s a great statistic, Cheryl. And it goes to Leader Banks roots as a community bank and helping small businesses. We talked about businesses that obviously needed a loan, and they needed immediately, because there was this crisis at hand. But I want to ask you a broader question. Does every business need a commercial loan? Or are there times when a business might be able to use a commercial loan, and they haven’t thought of that? They think everything’s going well, they have tons of clients, businesses good. And a new loan really isn’t on their radar, is there an opportunity for you to step in and help businesses get a commercial loan, they might not have thought about or expected?

Cheryl Glantz:
Yeah, that certainly could be possible. So I would say that probably, most businesses have a need for a loan at different times throughout the life of their business. So I would recommend best for a business owner seeking a loan, whether it be for their business, whether it be for their building, whether it could be for potentially some equipment, a line of credit, that has to, for a cash flow need, they would definitely be highly served to contact Leader Bank, and anyone on our lending team is well is very knowledgeable and well skilled to help them out. And that is the best way a business owner couldn’t, could help them to understand if they need a loan, they would go through, you know, a good conversation with a lender to determine what the needs would be.

Greg Farber:
You mentioned that anyone in your team could help. So if I’m a business, and I want to call in and get some help, I don’t want to get routed from one department to another and go through an endless call tree of who is going to put me on hold and help me and understand my needs. How is Leader able to be different and provide that level of service that you described, where I can quickly get to someone who can help me with what I need.

Cheryl Glantz:
So we do not separate our lending department, by territory by areas, you know, within Massachusetts, we don’t separate it by loan size. So as soon as they contact Leader Bank, our customer service area would immediately get them directed to a lender, and anyone in lending team would be more than capable of helping out.

Greg Farber:
I see. So if I’m a business and I’ve called in and been directed to a lender, as you say, then from there, what is that process of actually applying for a commercial loan look like? I called in I got Cheryl Glantz on the phone, I told you about whatever my needs and goals are for my business. So we come to the conclusion that maybe a loan would be appropriate. What’s my next step? What do I do?

Cheryl Glantz:
So usually after that, then some information would be required to be sent over. And with that information, then the lender would readily be able to provide some terms. And that’s, that’s the start of the process. And right there, it moves fluidly. We then go forth, we underwrite the loan, and then close the loan. And it’s a pretty efficient process.

Greg Farber:
I can imagine that really reduces stress and anxiety for the client. Are there any other things you can mention about your team or about Leader Bank that are differentiators that make a Leader stand out from a sea of other banks and lenders that are available around the industry?

Cheryl Glantz:
I think there certainly are some differentiators with Leader Bank. So I’ve been in the banking industry a long time. So I’ve known national banks, I’ve known regional banks and I’ve known community banks and you Usually they sort of like they fit within their pockets. What Leader has been able to do over the years, because of its tremendous growth, been able to add on all the facets that a national bank would have. So in other words, in the retail division, we have all the services, bells and whistles state of the art, to be able to enable customer, we’ve had the good fortune of hiring very seasoned people throughout the several several industries in order to be able to service clients borrowers. So it enables us to function is if we have all the capacity of a very large bank, but hands it all with a community bank type of service.

Greg Farber:
So basically, we functionally act like a large bank with a full breadth of products. But in terms of meeting with our clients, and touch and feel, we’re still very much a small local bank. We balanced that functionality of product mix with our attention to our client, to provide a better one on one experience.

Cheryl Glantz:
Exactly.

Greg Farber:
So Cheryl, if I could leave our listeners with a closing thought to walk away from this episode. Is there anything in particular that you’d like to share about yourself or your team or your experience here with Leader Bank?

Cheryl Glantz:
I would say to anybody who’s looking for any type of banking needs, whether it would be for a residential loan for a retail product or for a commercial loan, they would certainly be remiss if they didn’t make a phone call to Leader Bank.

Greg Farber:
Can’t argue with that, Cheryl, it’s been a pleasure hearing about your experience and what you bring to our clients. Thank you so much for speaking with me today and sharing your knowledge and viewpoints with our listeners. For more information on today’s subject, visit leaderbank.com. In addition to past episodes, you can also find our corresponding blog entries for more insights. This podcast is a production of Leader Bank, N.A. equal housing lender. Member FDIC. NMLS number 449250.