Season 3, Episode 2: Mark Turner
Banking on Culture and Strategy: A Conversation with Mark Turner
In this episode of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers, Jack Hubbard sits down with Mark Turner, former CEO of WSFS Bank and author of The Path to Sustained Excellence. Mark shares his journey from KPMG to leading one of the nation’s oldest banks through transformational growth, the 2008 financial crisis, and more than a decade of mergers and acquisitions. He reflects on lessons in leadership, culture, strategy, and resilience while offering candid insights on balancing personal challenges with professional demands. Listeners will also hear inspiring stories about building a people-first culture, the power of values-driven decision-making, and what the future holds for community banking.
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Jack Hubbard: So, as I mentioned in the introduction, I've had the great privilege of working with Wispus Bank over the years, and a number of the folks that Mark Turner mentioned in his great book, The Path to Sustained Excellence, and Mark is with us today on the podcast. Mark, thanks for joining us.
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Mark T: Oh, well, thank you, Jack. Thanks for having me, and really looking forward to the conversation.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, it's a great book, and it really is an autobiography, not only of yourself, but the bank, and we want to talk about that a little bit. But, you know, after Mark graduated from LaSalle University in 1985, you went on to KPMG. I'm curious, give us a little bit of your history.
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Jack Hubbard: And how did you end up going into banking?
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Mark T: So when I was at KPMG, I got, as you do, I got exposure to a lot of different companies in a lot of different industries, including banking. I left KPMG after 8 years as a senior manager, took a brief,
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Mark T: kind of wrong turn, went to work for a company that sold itself inside of 6 months, so I was out of a job, looking for another job, and, happened to have some friends back at KPMG who knew
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Mark T: that there was an open position up at Meridian Bancorp, which is a running-based bank at the time, big regional bank, and I had done some work up there in my early years, so…
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Mark T: Interviewed for the job, it was in corporate development, so mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, and they were very active, at that time in it.
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Mark T: Got the job, and spent 3 years there getting to know the industry. In mergers and acquisitions work, you get to know the ins and outs of an organization, of an industry pretty quick, because you've got to do lots of, assessment and due diligence around almost everything in the bank.
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Mark T: And, after 3 years, they sold to Core States, and, well, Core States was a great organization. It was a little bit too large for my liking. I didn't, wasn't able to…
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Mark T: have as much impact and make as much difference as I was looking to do, at that point in my life, in my early 30s. And so, again, my friends at KPMG, new of an opening down at WSFS Bank.
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Mark T: Which was, just being turned around by, Skip Shane Halls at the time, and it almost failed in the 19… in 1990.
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Mark T: But by 1996, when I joined, it was kind of back on its feet, and looking to,
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Mark T: reapply itself, and figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up, and I came in as controller, and quickly was promoted to CFO after my boss, Bill Abbott, retired a couple years later.
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Mark T: And then Chief Operating Officer in 2001, and then, tapped on the shoulder.
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Mark T: a year or two later, as, you know, a possible replacement for Skip when he wanted to retire. And in 2007, mid-2007, that happened. I was promoted to CEO, just before the financial crisis, which was an interesting, time to be promoted to CEO of a bank.
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Mark T: And then stayed on till 2019, where I handed it off to my successor, Roger Levinson. I stayed on the board as exec chair for a year after that, then on the board for a couple years to see the transition through, and left in 2022.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, it's so interesting. When you started as a controller, the bank was about a billion dollars, and now it's over $20 billion, and it's had an amazing history. Now, I might be wrong on this.
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Jack Hubbard: But…
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Jack Hubbard: it's my understanding that the bank was chartered before the city of Wilmington, Delaware, where it is, I think where the headquarters is. Give us a little background, because the bank started in 1832, we certainly aren't going to go through every year, but give us a little history of Wisfus Bank.
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Mark T: Yeah. So, you're correct, the bank was started in 1832. It's the seventh oldest bank in the country, which is pretty amazing.
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Mark T: And for most of its history, up until 1990, or excuse me, 1986, it was a… it was a thrift, and a mutual, and so its growth was kind of slow and steady. It was started by…
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Mark T: town fathers, chief amongst them, Willard Hall, who believed that the quote-unquote common man needed a place to, you know, sock away some money and be able to grow their thrift, and then, you know, eventually buy a home, things like that.
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Mark T: But, by 1986, you know, the public markets were going pretty good. Mutual was… it was demutualized and converted. And then,
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Mark T: got a lot of money, from the capital markets, which, in the late 80s, getting… having a lot of money to invest, if you were a bank, usually meant commercial real estate. It was booming at that time. The bank invested a lot in commercial real estate. Turned out to be some…
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Mark T: not-so-good, timely investments, as, commercial real estate kind of crashed in, in the late, late 80s, and the bank almost failed. And that's where my predecessor, Skip Shaneholmes, came in. Actually, before him, a couple
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Mark T: A couple, really, diligent folks got on the board and did a, essentially a proxy fight to take over the board, and
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Mark T: to put in new management. Skip came in in the early 90s, convinced the regulators not to, take over the bank.
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Mark T: And then recapitalized it and started it on its way. I came in in 1996, helped, grow the bank,
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Mark T: Redirected in a strategic direction, stayed my…
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Mark T: 20 years in the C-suite, found my successor, my very capable successor, Roger, who's done a terrific job over the last 7 years of leading the bank through some big acquisitions, as well as the pandemic and all the things that went along with that.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, and you… and you chronicle it in the book. This is the path to sustained excellence. As I mentioned, this is an interesting book because
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Jack Hubbard: It's a history of your life as a banker, it's a history of where Wispus has gone under your leadership and others, and it's also a really nice, I think, roadmap for future leaders.
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Jack Hubbard: You're very honest about your health, about the family, about the bank in this book, Mark. I'm curious, what was your inspiration? Why did you decide to chronicle your history and write it down and put it in a book?
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Mark T: Yeah.
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Mark T: There were really, two motivations. One was external, and the other was internal, and they kind of came in that order. The first was Skip, my predecessor, wrote a book, as well, called From Failing to Phenomenal, and that chronicled most of his time, and the early history of the bank, and most of his time in saving the bank, and
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Mark T: recapitalizing it and getting it back on its way. But he stopped in 1996, I think, on purpose, because that's when I started with the bank, and…
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Mark T: said to me, you know, you've got Volume 2. And in fact, in the book.
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Mark T: It's his book, and he says at various points, we'll learn more about that in Volume 2, which then he threw in my lap, so I was obviously compelled to write Volume 2 at that point. So what was the external impetus? I will tell you that,
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Mark T: At that point in my life, I wasn't really interested in writing a book. I had never done it. I wasn't really interested in looking back, but as I got into it,
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Mark T: the internal motivation kicked in, and I realized there was a… there was a… just a ton that we… happened to us, and that we did in that book, and…
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Mark T: That were, you know, we had a lot of lessons to learn, a lot of successes to convey, and I thought the next generation of bankers at WISFUS and otherwise, and otherwise people.
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Mark T: just in business, that there were some good things to pass on there. And then as part of that, there's… we had a team of great people, and a lot of help along the way, and I had a lot of…
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Mark T: personal,
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Mark T: heroes, if you will, that helped me and grew me, and I had a lot of thanking to do, so I took the time in the book to make sure all those people got their due.
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Jack Hubbard: Next week, I talked to Ken Martin, who is, in my mind, one of the great sales leaders in banking in the last 30 or 40 years, and I asked Ken about his memories of early sales management. He's been in the business for about
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Jack Hubbard: 40 years. So I'll ask you a similar question. You started out as CEO at around age 45,
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Jack Hubbard: In a very tough time for American banking, around 2007, then 2008, all that kind of hit the fan. What are your memories as an early CEO, and if a budding CEO is watching now.
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Jack Hubbard: What are some things that you can give as advice for a CEO just coming into that chair?
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Mark T: Yeah.
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Mark T: So, tremendous amount of uncertainty in the entire marketplace when I started, and the cracks were just starting to form in the dike.
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Mark T: So when I say in the whole marketplace, it was, you know, our customers, our associates.
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Mark T: regulators, investors, business partners, and that was just us, and it was the same across almost all industries, and across the entire economy. Everybody was nervous when things started to happen in 2007 into 2008.
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Mark T: you know, when the hedge funds started to fail, that had a lot of subprime mortgages, when Bear Stearns went down in early 2008, everybody's trying to figure out whether, you know, that was something that was, going to be systemic, or was just a one-off. I remember, not just the uncertainty and the information that was flowing, there was just a ton of information to consume.
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Mark T: But having a lot of meetings.
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Mark T: you know, we had special meetings and groups to discuss what went on at Bear Stearns and what we could learn from it. And what, you know, out of that, what we saw coming and what we needed… what we thought we needed to do, to… to gird ourselves for the times that were coming. So there were… I remember in 2000, you know, after the you-know-what hit the fan.
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Mark T: with Lehman Brothers, and after that, the stock market tanked, and bank stocks were down 80%.
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Mark T: I just remember having daily meetings around, you know, liquidity and, you know, what-ifs, a lot of scenario planning, almost every day. And…
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Mark T: You know, it was as time, there was a great internal focus on…
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Mark T: the bank, and our customers, and our associates, and the communications… communications were key. We were saying something to our associates almost every day about what was going on, just to keep them calm, but also to keep them focused, so that, you know, there wasn't a lack of information that, you know, rumors would fill. So, a lot of internal focus, lot of information
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Mark T: to digest, a lot of uncertainty, and then from us, a lot of, lot of,
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Mark T: of digesting that information, and then trying to make sense of it, and then communicating it to our associates, and even our customers. We had a lot of customers coming in saying, you have a lot of money with your bank, what should I do with it? We had a lot of calming to do.
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Jack Hubbard: You also write in the book, in a very personal way, about your wife, your kids, and your health. How were you able, Mark, to be able to balance
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Jack Hubbard: Because CEO of this bank in this time in our history is a 24-7 job. How are you able to balance the health, the family, the job, the spouse? How are you able to do all that?
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Mark T: Yeah.
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Mark T: Both. First, I would say not very well. As you read in the book, it was a time of extreme pressure, extreme anxiety, as you say, 24-7. If you weren't in… you were probably in the office 12 hours a day, sometimes more than that, but as a CEO,
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Mark T: during that time, you were always on. You know, you were always thinking about things. You know, when you woke up in the morning, on the drive-in, on the drive home, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night with an…
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Mark T: an extraneous thought that hid you in not being able to get back to sleep. So, you know, I had a lot of challenges personally with balancing and health back then. So, you know, a big part of it is family. You know, my wife was tremendous during that time. I had two kids that we were raising. They gave me a source of calm and inspiration, and…
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Mark T: just distraction.
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Mark T: And frankly, the team around me. I have had wonderful people around me, that were encouraging, supportive, helpful, and that's from…
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Mark T: People like C.G. Chelladin, on the board, Skip Shane Hall's my predecessor, folks like, Roger Levinson, who we just hired, became my successor. Real, steady…
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Mark T: calm hand in a storm. Peggy Eddins, head of human resources, able to talk to her, talk through things. Lot of support from family, coworkers, friends.
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Mark T: Yeah, it.
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Jack Hubbard: it's a fascinating read about what you went through, and I think
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Jack Hubbard: people that… that think, oh, CEO's a cushy job, and you play a lot of golf, and etc, should read the pages about when you got into the… when you got into that seat, because it wasn't an easy time at all.
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Jack Hubbard: As you go forward now in your career as a CEO, you had to make some decisions. You either had to grow the bank, or likely sell the bank. You chose to grow the bank with a variety of mergers.
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Jack Hubbard: Talk about how you were able to integrate cultures, Mark. To me, the easy part of a merger is the numbers, is the finances. It's blending cultures together and getting people to work together. How were you able to… how were you able to do that?
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Mark T: So over, probably 10 years, we did 10 different mergers and acquisitions, and, you know, if you add on to that the portfolios, that we acquired, you know, easily a dozen different
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Mark T: add-ons to the organization. I think a big part of it was we were smart, and we started small. We started small and non-complex, you know, with a branch deal, and then every one we build on that. So, branch deal, and then…
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Mark T: Whole private bank, and then whole public bank, and then larger public bank, and then larger private banks, and mortgage companies, trust companies, and everyone we, and this is a credit to Peggy Eddins, who was our head of…
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Mark T: Human Resources, culture strategy at that time.
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Mark T: She was really, really good at, bringing teams together from both sides of the organization, and game planning, as well as
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Mark T: you know, writing a playbook, and then learning from the playbook. So, every one of those, we started small and less complex, and then ultimately got to, you know, much, much larger, over-billion-dollar acquisitions, and more complex. And in every one.
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Mark T: We had teams of people from both sides of the organization, and our business consultants and partners helping us along the way do game planning in all parts of the organization. So there was a ton of intentionality, and a big part of that intentionality was culture. So, we had a culture team during our, during our mergers and acquisitions, from both sides of the organization that talked about
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Mark T: culture, and, you know, how we were gonna bring them together, and what we, you know, what our policies said about our culture versus what theirs said, and, you know, and what our, you know, ethos was, what their ethos was, and a ton of intentionality around
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Mark T: bringing those together. I will also say one of the things that I learned is that,
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Mark T: In any merger and acquisition, you have to have one dominant
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Mark T: culture, one dominant leadership team, one dominant strategy, as opposed to trying to mix and match. That doesn't mean there can't be borrowing from both sides of the organization, but you have to have a firm direction on each of those things and stick to it. And I think we did that particularly well.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, and I'm curious about that, because there have been mergers, many of them, in banking and in other kinds of industries, where the two cultures just are oil and water. I'm curious
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Jack Hubbard: if there were organizations that you looked at and said, you know, this is just not a cultural fit for us, and I'm curious if you did… if you saw that, and if you walked away from any mergers because of that.
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Mark T: Yeah, that's a great insight, and in fact, I can remember a couple of them, including, you know, one subprime credit card company that we were looking at. Culture was just not clearly much, much different than ours, and we did walk away from it.
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Mark T: And there were others that it, you know, from a very, very early, it became clear that
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Mark T: culture and social issues were going to be a huge challenge, and, you know, not… the juice not worth the squeeze. So, I think we got very good at identifying, what cultures were similar and might be easily integrated. But also, there were some situations where
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Mark T: The culture at the other organization was… was broken, and, did not have good leadership, and we were able to,
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Mark T: supplant that to everybody's delight, including the folks in the organization we acquired. They were really looking for something different and better. So, it doesn't have to be two, healthy, similar cultures that are brought together. You can bring together a culture that's working and a culture that's broken.
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Mark T: And, delight everybody in… in the transition.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, speaking of delight, you, you bring on an outside consultant, to, to help with marketing and branding, and she puts together this amazing phrase.
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Jack Hubbard: WSFUS, we stand for service.
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Jack Hubbard: Talk about the consultant you brought in, and how that tagline came about.
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Mark T: Yeah.
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Mark T: So, great story. So, as we start in the early 2000s, we had a very eclectic strategy. We were… we were involved in many different things that was taking the organization in many different directions, and
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Mark T: you know, a big theme, at the time was, you know, kind of, like, who are you? And we decided that, you know, we weren't getting… even though many of them were successful, we weren't getting value, valued in the marketplace for them. And so we decided, prudently to sell off
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Mark T: a lot of those epileptic things, take the winnings from them, and the winnings were substantial. We doubled our capital, and reinvest in a singular strategy, a more focused strategy, differentiating strategy, which was around…
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Mark T: we want to be the best bank for service in our marketplaces. And obviously, that's a, that's a mouthful, best bank for service. And so, we hired a, a firm called,
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Mark T: A, B, and C, Aloysius Butler, and Clark, who, as we were re-strategizing, we knew we needed to rebrand, and Joan Sullivan, our marketing head, at the time, led that effort, and they came… with her, they came up with the…
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Mark T: tagline, WSFS, we stand for service. So, it took this, you know, jumble of letters that not a lot of people knew, didn't know what stood for, you know,
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Mark T: Its legal name was Wilmington Savings Fund Society, which kind of connoted something…
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Mark T: old, and maybe a little slow, and turned it into something that was new, and focused, and different, and directed, and we stand for service. That moniker has been around and been very successful for us for, gosh, 23, 24 years now.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, it really, it really has stuck. And part of the reason it works
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Jack Hubbard: is the people in the organization. As I mentioned, I've had a little bit of an opportunity to work with WSFUS over the years.
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Jack Hubbard: A lady named Sheila Hacker brought me in. Now, Sheila's retired now, but she was Director of Human Sigma and Learning, and then there's… there's Sherry Krasinski, whose only bank
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Jack Hubbard: for 37 years, has been… started out as a teller, now as EVP and Chief Consumer Officer. And you mentioned Peggy Eddins, who's also retired, and one of the things that stands out about me, Mark, and in the book, but not only in the book, because I've experienced it.
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Jack Hubbard: is the fact that you and others in your organization were very forward-thinking in bringing women along to senior positions in the organization, much better than a lot of other banks. What was the thought process around that? What was the impetus for that?
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Mark T: Yeah, so, hard to talk about this without, in some ways, sounding a little,
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Mark T: Stereotypical or sexist, but those three women that you mentioned kind of exemplify
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Mark T: the best of WISFUS. I mean, professional, smart.
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Mark T: effective, capable, but with great attitudes around caring and service for everything and everybody. And whether that's more of a womanly trait or just a trait in those three, I'll leave that up to others to decide, but,
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Mark T: They were just, it was just innate in them, and they were passionate about
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Mark T: service, about caring for other people, and nurturing other people, and growing and developing other people, and the organization. And,
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Mark T: without those three, and a lot of other people like them, I mean, those three were really exemplars. If I had to… if you had to ask me, you know, give me 5 people in your… in your organization that, you know, if you had to meet them, you'd walk away with a strong sense of who Wispus is, they would be 3 of the 5.
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Mark T: And, without them and a lot of other people who worked with them and were a lot like them, we would not have had, either the culture we had or…
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Mark T: The brand we had, or the brand… the brand would not have been as genuine.
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Mark T: And, we would have not been able to grow, because
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Mark T: Having an organization that was so strongly rooted in culture and strategy and direction allowed us to be very focused about our growth and what to grow into and what not to, what organizations to partner with and what not to, how to integrate those, how to be successful in
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Mark T: You know, grow through, you know, just a customer at a time, a group of people at a time, and whole banks at a time.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. Yeah, so one Saturday, I get… my wife brings down to my office a big package, and she said, I don't know what this is, but it's from Wisfus.
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Jack Hubbard: So, I open it up, and it's from Peggy Eddins. Now, Peggy did some work for me on the faculty of one of the schools at Graduate School of Banking, and she always talked about your strategic planning process, and your town halls that you did. And so, I opened this package, and it's your strategic plan.
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Jack Hubbard: And it is graphically appealing, it's in color, it's in common language that anybody can understand.
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Jack Hubbard: you really set a… you and Peggy set a great tone for strategic planning. It was a… it's a very unique, all-inclusive process, Mark. Talk about the strategic planning process, and then the town halls after that.
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Jack Hubbard: Where you actually took the plan out to the field and said, here, this is your plan.
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Mark T: Yeah.
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Mark T: Yeah, I think that was another key to success, and again, credit, credit to Peggy for not only the ideation, but also the execution of it.
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Mark T: So, I think a lot of us at the bank had been with other banks and other institutions where strategic planning looked very different.
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Mark T: It was highly efficient, if you will, if not effective. So, it was a small group of people at the top of the organization, the C-suite, and maybe their direct reports, and, who did a strategic plan, presented to the board, the board kind of rubber-stamped it, and then it sat on a shelf, collecting dust.
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Mark T: Only once a year to be brought out, where we compare things to the strategic plan, and then…
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Mark T: you know, wrote… wrote some nice things about why we were on or why we were off the strategic plan. So, again, highly efficient, but not… not really an effective,
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Mark T: either planning tool or a tool for direction and guidance of the organization. So we wanted to be the opposite of that, and our watch phrase was that if our strategic plan does not…
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Mark T: change the daily activities, and daily mindset of everybody in the organization, from all the way down to, you know, people who are first gen in the organization to our board members, C-suite and the board members. If it does not change the
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Mark T: The activities and the mindset of people on a daily basis, then it is a failure.
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Mark T: And so, we knew at the end of the day we wanted to have a booklet that was not a, you know, a big binder of lots of papers, but something that was very easily digestible, and not only easily digestible, people wanted to read it, because it was, as you said, it was colorful, it was plain language, it was graphs, it was easy to understand, it was, you know, there was passion in there, there was direction, there was guidance, there was
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Mark T: there was provocation, in there. And so, our strategic plans wound up to be, you know, with a lot of underlying work, obviously, 20-page documents, booklets that were, you know.
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Mark T: People could have with them, and in the organization, and alive in the organization every day.
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Mark T: but the…
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Mark T: It's not just that, the… how we generated the plan was we… we did focus groups around the organization, from all the way down to people that were just newly starting in a branch, who are newly starting in,
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Mark T: The commercial organization, or in our wealth organization, all the way up through C-suite and through the board. We have focus groups and meetings about
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Mark T: who we are, what we want to be, what we're… what our, you know, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats were, and then brought all that together. So everybody was a part of the process. And then when we finally, you know, went through, obviously, a lot of iterations, and we finally printed it and got approval by the board, it went out, and everybody in the organization got a copy of it. In fact, there were
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Mark T: copies that were lying around in the branches for anybody to see. And that was a big part of what we discussed, too. We had people saying, well, isn't this proprietary? Should you label it confidential and keep it somewhere? I was like, you know, we want this to be shared. We want everybody in the marketplace to understand what we're about. And frankly, when you get to that point.
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Mark T: A strategic plan is about execution, and if somebody could have taken that and tried to copy it, but if they didn't have all the stuff going on behind it, it would have been a failure for them. And a big part of getting it out in the organization… Peggy ran 30, if I remember the first year she did this, she ran
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Mark T: 35 town halls, where she took that out to everybody in the organization.
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Mark T: And everybody attended one of the town halls, and she went over, over 2 to 3 hours, this is our strategic plan, this is what it says, this is why it says it, this is what we're gonna do. These are our plans over the next 1, 2, and 3 years, on all the things that are important to us down to each division. And then ask them about that, about their understanding of that, but ask a really, really important question at the end.
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Mark T: And…
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Mark T: How do you see yourself in the strategic plan? Where are you in the strategic plan? What can you do to make the strategic plan go? And then, in the instances where she got people that did not know or thought that they weren't in the strategic plan, she tried to…
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Mark T: Help them understand how they were, what they did was.
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Mark T: important to the strategic plan. Or if not, then, you know, where there was a disconnect, you know, write that down in the playbook. So for next time, we made sure that so-and-so's department was included in the process, because they didn't, you know, they weren't seeing… they didn't see themselves clearly in the plan.
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Mark T: And so, over her time there, and even since, you know, we've been doing that for 15-plus years, the plan has gotten just better and better and better at being a passionate, directive source of strategy throughout the entire organization.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, this is all about collaboration, and when you talk about collaboration internally, that's great, but when you talk about collaborating with a competitor, okay, that's a little different. In the book, there is a story about TD,
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Jack Hubbard: Talk about the TD story, because I heard it when I was at the bank, and it's… it's almost unbelievable. Talk about the TD story.
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Mark T: Yeah, so this was October, thank you. This was October 2008, so this is one month after
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Mark T: the Lehman Brothers episode, and,
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Mark T: when the floods started coming. And…
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Mark T: Sorry, my cat is here. He always showed… he always shows up when I have the computer on. And so it was 2008, and the marketplace at that point was just ridiculously uncertain and nervous, and as I said, October, you know, it was the… it was the nadir of the stock markets. Bank stocks were down 80%, you know, there were talks of people like GE being not able to make payroll.
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Mark T: The marketplace was incredibly nervous at that time, probably the most nervous, you know, other than the Great Depression, back in the, you know.
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Mark T: late 20s, early 30s. And, one day we're sitting there on our 11th floor, which looked out over the rest of downtown, Wilmington, and, 3 blocks away.
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Mark T: was TD Bank's, branch. Now, TD Bank had just acquired
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Mark T: Commerce Bank, and that's why they had that branch there. And, this happened to be the weekend, maybe an ill-chosen weekend to do their systems conversions, where you take all the
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Mark T: the accounts, and you convert them over from the old systems of commerce to the new systems. And they had a glitch, which unfortunately happens. It was a really ill-timed glitch, where
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Mark T: things weren't showing up. Balances weren't showing up in customer accounts, it were showing up as wrong.
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Mark T: The rumors started to go through the marketplace that there was something wrong at TD. People were worried about their money in general, but were particularly worried about it at that time. And so lines started to form of people showing up saying, you know, where's my money? What's going on? And in many cases, give me my money. And
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Mark T: you know, it started to look like a mini run on the bank. We sent some folks down to see what was going on, and they came back and told us, you know, exactly what was going on that, but also that there were some competitors in the marketplace.
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Mark T: Who, were taking advantage of that. You know, had signs up, you know, that said to the effect, you know, having a problem with your account at TD, come over to our bank. And it was more than just one competitor. So they were kind of fanning the flames a little bit, and…
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Mark T: The question came through, we happened to be in a Tuesday morning executive staff meeting at that time. Okay, what do we do? Literally looking out over the line forms, and then we found out that this was going on at all the TD branches in our marketplace.
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Mark T: And we said, you know, if we really do… this… this is a testing moment for us and our culture, and our ethos, and if we really do stand for service, which we do, what…
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Mark T: And we really do take our values seriously, and we do… what do we do now? What's the right thing to do at this point in time? Because that was our number one value, you know, we do the right thing.
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Mark T: And number two was service. And so we said, if those are our true values and our brand, what do we do? And so, the group kind of jointly came up with, let's help. Okay, how can we best help?
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Mark T: So we, we got together and we said to our folks who were in branches near the TD branches.
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Mark T: Go over, take off your name tags, you know, we don't just want this to be about WISFES. Take off your name tags, go over and introduce yourself to the associates at TD who are handling this, who are clearly frazzled, and say, how can we help?
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Mark T: And in almost all the cases, they were, very appre… well, in all the cases, they were willing and very appreciative, and said, well, obviously you can't work behind the counter here, but what you can do is help triage lines. Keep people calm, tell them that everything's fine, their money's safe, take down the notes, whether it was, you know, level of anxiety, level of importance.
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Mark T: Pass it on to the folks at TD.
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Mark T: And… it turned out to be, not surprisingly, the right thing to do for TD, for us,
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Mark T: You know, having… at that time, having people in your marketplace nervous about their money was not a good thing for anybody, including us, because you never know who will be next in a situation like that.
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Mark T: So it turned out to be not only the right thing at the time, but the right thing for long term, because it's… it helped cement who we were, and helped cement our values, and added a folklore story that's told to this day.
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Mark T: And in fact, I was up at Wharton doing some guest lecturing a couple months ago, ran into an executive there from TD in Toronto, and we told that story, and she came up to me afterwards, and she said, they still tell that story at TD up in Toronto.
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Mark T: So, it clearly has become a folklore story, not just for us, but for others as well, and one that we're extremely proud of, and I think just exemplifies that if you… even in the toughest times, the toughest situation, if you stick to your values, you stick to your brand, it's going to be the right thing.
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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. Couple more questions.
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Jack Hubbard: you… you talked about your story. The story of community banking is… is a phenomenal one. It's helped
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Jack Hubbard: countless businesses, families, not-for-profits, etc. And they dot the landscape of American banking.
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Jack Hubbard: It's changing, though. Lots of mergers and acquisitions. Talk about banking in general, and especially community banking, Mark. Where do you see it 3 to 5 years from now?
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Mark T: So, you know, there's… so, a little history. Back in the 80s, I think there were some 20,000 FDIC-insured institutions, so, you know…
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Mark T: banks, thrifts, people that, you know, took deposits, made loans. Now they're around 4,000, so it's… and…
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Mark T: you know, every year, a couple hundred banks go out of existence, mostly through mergers and acquisitions, sometimes through failures. It used to be that, you know, 200 would go out of existence, but, you know, 100, 150 would come into existence. Now, banking has gotten so tough that,
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Mark T: very few banks are formed now, so the consolidation has only… new banks are formed. Consolidation has only accelerated. So, obviously, that will continue.
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Mark T: Banking is also… banking has gotten increasingly tough over my time in there, and now, past my time, gotten even tougher. I mean, there's just increased competition from the larger banks, you know, they're seen as, you know, being too big to fail, so people will put a certain amount of their money in there just because they're assumed to be too big to fail.
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Mark T: That's a source of intense competition.
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Mark T: You've got the fintechs, the neobanks, you've got, private equity, private credit, all sorts of disintermediators, including in the payments industry, and,
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Mark T: it's… it's just gotten incredibly tough. And, you know, the regulation has gotten tougher, you know, it waxes and wanes from time to time, but it's, you know, it's still…
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Mark T: increasingly getting more difficult over time. So being a bank is really tough. Becoming a bank, a new bank, is almost impossible. Community banks and banking will still have its relevant place in the
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Mark T: Capital stack of others, if you will, because it still is the most reliable, most trusted source of capital.
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Mark T: And I will continue to be. So, banks, to be successful, especially community banks, need to be
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Mark T: relevant and successful. They…
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Mark T: They need to be competitive on things like products and delivery, so stay up to speed with what customers want, especially with new technologies. But to be successful, they…
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Mark T: need to rely on that. They need to focus on that reliability, and the service, and the trust.
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Mark T: So, stay close to the customer, be different in that way. Be… be there for the customer, be, you know, increase the trust levels with the customer, and, provide service that they can't get from
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Mark T: clicks, and folks far away, and big banks. That's… those are going to be the survivors, and fortunately, I think that's…
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Mark T: what, WISFIS picked and WSFIS is focused on, and others like us are focused on. So, community banks will still have a place, there'll just be fewer of them.
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Jack Hubbard: That's… that's fair.
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Jack Hubbard: Now, you've listened to Mark for almost 45 minutes, and what you've probably picked up is that he is a humble man.
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Jack Hubbard: And the reason I bring that up is because in the book, you talk about how you retired quietly on January 1st of 2019. No fanfare, you didn't want a lot of fanfare, you wanted your successor to be able to have a pretty clean slate.
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Jack Hubbard: What was it about that day, that date, 2019, when you were still a young man, lot to give? Why did you decide at that point that it was time to retire?
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Mark T: Yeah, so I developed over my time as CEO the feeling that, and the belief that a CEO of any organization, even a successful organization, even if you've had success as CEO, is a very, very, very hard job. And,
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Mark T: that 10 to 15 years is… because things change so rapidly, and it is a tough job. For most people, of course, there are exceptions, you know. You look at Warren Buffett as one. For most people, 10 to 15 years is the right time to be a CEO.
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Mark T: Right? And I, at that point, I'd been in the C-suite 20 years, and…
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Mark T: And I've been CEO for almost a dozen years.
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Mark T: And, said, this is the, you know, said this is the time. I had run my race, I had, as a proverbial, as I said, left it all on the field. I had done the planning with the board to find the right next successor, and,
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Mark T: knew it was time to pass it on, and I'd seen a lot of…
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Mark T: stories around that time of folks that just hung on too long, and not only ruined their legacy, ruined the reputation of their entire organization, and that's the… that's the last thing I wanted to do, was to…
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Mark T: harm Wispus by being, focused on what was good for myself. But I also had an extremely,
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Mark T: capable's the wrong word. Capable, but with tremendous potential successor in Roger Levinson, and knew he was the right person to take us to even greater heights, especially as we were growing larger. He had a much better sense of what it took to be successful in larger organizations, given his background.
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Jack Hubbard: And I know what you're thinking. Oh, Mark retired in 2019, and he's probably played a lot of golf.
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Jack Hubbard: He is on the board of First Bank St. Louis. He's on the foundation of LaSalle University. He's a member of the faculty at Wharton. He's a Wharton Fellow. Mark…
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Jack Hubbard: What keeps you busy now?
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Mark T: Yeah. So, you know, applying all that, you know, you just mentioned it, but applying all that, that, I learned to, help other organizations. So, First Bank is a bank in the Midwest that, $7 billion and is…
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Mark T: very much where we were as WISPUS when I took… came on as CEO. So, I have 15 years of learning and growing at WISPUS that I can help apply to that organization. I head the comp committee there, I'm on the audit committee, and just a really, really great set of folks in leadership and on the board to work with to help improve the organization.
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Mark T: And that's what, you know, that's one of those community banks we talk about that is and can be relevant for the future. So, and at LaSalle, I'm on the board of trustees at LaSalle.
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Mark T: small…
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Mark T: private institutions of higher learning are going through a difficult time, so I can take what I've learned in leadership and in governance and help the folks at LaSalle. In fact, there's a great story in the newspaper just today and yesterday about how LaSalle's turning things around in terms of number of new students and,
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Mark T: new transfers and international students, as well as people staying on campus. So, Dan Allen and his team there are really doing a great job in turning that around. I'm proud to provide, you know, a little help along the way. And then, at Wharton, I'm one there
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Mark T: Advisory board for their leadership curriculum.
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Mark T: And also a senior fellow, so I do a lot of guest lecturing up there, and a lot of advising on
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Mark T: leadership, governance, and, you know, again, taking what I learned, which is also in the book, and hopefully helping the next generation of executives, business people, leaders learn some things quicker than I learned them, and, use them, and then even grow further beyond them.
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Jack Hubbard: The Path to Sustained Excellence, Strategy, Culture, and Team, written by Mark Turner. Mark, how can people get the book and get ahold of you?
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Mark T: So, www.thepathtosustustainedexcellence.com is the website. Go on there, and you can see all about the book, and some testimonials, as well as a page where you can
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Mark T: you know, order the book online through Barnes & Noble, etc. That's the quickest way to get it, and thank you if you do get it. And you can contact me through there. There's a… there's also a page there that it says, you can put in your information for have me to contact you.
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Jack Hubbard: Terrific. Mark Turner, thanks so much for your help. Congratulations on an amazing career, and on a great book. Thanks for being with us today.
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Mark T: Thank you, Jack, really appreciate it.
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Jack Hubbard: Okay, Mark. Thank you for arranging your time. I know you must… are you ever home anymore?
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Mark T: Actually, you know, I'm probably 40-50% busy, profession-wise, but it's very eclectic. You know, it's here, there, everywhere, there's never a consistent…
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Mark T: week, and I am playing a lot of golf, as you can probably tell by my tan, so I…
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Mark T: I, I said this is my revenge golf tour. For 20 years while I was raising two girls and leading a bank, the only golf I got to play was kind of customer outing, hit and giggle golf, so now I'm trying to get around to play all the golf that I miss.
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Jack Hubbard: Well, good for you. You've got a great group of people. I've been privileged to work with you a little bit, and truly, you know, it was inspirational for me, because when I read the names of these folks, I know these people! You know, I've worked with these people, which is kind of fun. So, well, thanks again. It will be on,
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Jack Hubbard: September 17th.
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Jack Hubbard: you'll get a little notification from our team, and you can use it in any way you want. I'll certainly let Peggy and the team at the bank know that it'll be on on the 17th and 17th at noon Eastern time.
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Mark T: Okay, terrific.
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Jack Hubbard: Thanks again. Thank you, Mark.
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Mark T: Thank you for the honor. Take care.
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Jack Hubbard: See ya. Bye now.
