Season 2, Episode 35: Tom Leavitt

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Jack Hubbard: So, as I mentioned, we're in the 3rd week of small business month, and I couldn't think of anybody better to to have on as my guest than Tom Levitt, because Tom and his bank, Northfield Savings Bank, up in Vermont, do a tremendous job with small business, and I know that because Mary Beth Sullivan referred me to Tom, and Mary. Beth would never steer anybody wrong, Tom, so great to have you with us today.

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Thomas Leavitt: Well, Jack, that's that's a high compliment from you both, and my regards to Mary Beth. And I agree with you. A 100%.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, she's terrific. Well, we're we're going to have a really good, robust discussion about small business and community banking and lots of different things. But let's start out at the beginning, Tom.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm curious you're about to retire in the fall, and you've been a banker for a while. I'm curious always about how people decide to get into this industry. So let's start early on in your career and then build us up to where you are now as President of Northfield.

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Thomas Leavitt: Thanks, Jack. I'd be happy to do that.

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Thomas Leavitt: I'm kind of an accidental banker. I'm sure your listeners will appreciate this, and I'm sure you appreciate it as well. We don't set out.

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Thomas Leavitt: and our our youth to necessarily enter the financial services realm is something that's unknown to us.

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Thomas Leavitt: I was

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Thomas Leavitt: no different than anyone else in that regard, and that I went to high school in my hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and then on to the University of New Hampshire, on a football scholarship, and then to the University of Pennsylvania, and got an Mba. In marketing and corporate finance.

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Thomas Leavitt: So I was out into the industrial world, and that was more my natural habitat, both by upbringing and by temperament. I also enjoyed the adventure of being out there on the national scene with a couple of

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Thomas Leavitt: high level industrial distribution firms earlier in my career.

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Thomas Leavitt: But the intangibles that always attract you to something that may not have been an anticipated fit, certainly applied to me, and that intangible was the love I have for my home state of Vermont, and opportunities in Vermont

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Thomas Leavitt: with a Gdp that is, in the low end of our States nationally, and a mere rounding error for the national economy

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Thomas Leavitt: was not a place to necessarily head for overall career development. But there were a couple of sectors that interested me. One was financial services and banking, and without getting into the details of the yellow brick road. On that I did have an opportunity to go to work for Merchants Bank.

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Thomas Leavitt: publicly traded Commercial Bank with a long and illustrious history in Burlington, Vermont under then CEO, Dudley Davis and 1987. And that's how I got my 1st taste, and after 3 years I went back to my industrial roots

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Thomas Leavitt: back to the national scene in places like Syracuse and Chicago and Billings, Montana.

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Thomas Leavitt: and a new administration came along at Merchants Bank and in the mid to late nineties, and then they had heard a little bit about my prior and Joe Booten, the new CEO of Merchants Bank, asked if I'd be interested in coming home to Vermont, and for a second time to take my now growing family through its junior high and high school years and on from there. So

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Thomas Leavitt: we moved back to Vermont in 1996, I started with Merchants Bank, Mbvt. It was struggling a little bit at that point and needed some lift. It had been previously.

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Thomas Leavitt: The number one preferred lender in the Us. And the Sba program while I'd been there the 1st time around

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Thomas Leavitt: second time around. It was a rebuild project with some divisions needing a a complete overhaul like the retail banking group, and Joe asked me to come home

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Thomas Leavitt: in my now mid thirties mid to later thirties, and take on the assignment as part of the executive team there, and that was a great 16 and a half year run, and we got a lot of great things done to that together. Improve the health of the bank, doubled more than doubled the size.

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Thomas Leavitt: and then I was asked to come to Massachusetts and take on an assignment as the President and CEO of Mountain One, financial, a multibank holding company at the time based in North Adams, Massachusetts.

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Thomas Leavitt: and after a couple of years of doing that, and having moved happily to the Berkshires, the opportunity rang again to come to my beloved home State as the CEO of Northfield Savings Bank, and that commenced in October of 2,014. And so here I am

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Thomas Leavitt: planning to put a bookend on that 11 years later, as I wrap up that career I just described.

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Jack Hubbard: It's a great career, and one of the things you mentioned is intangibles, and I always remember when I talk to somebody who played football, or played basketball or played on a sports team, man or woman. I'm always reminded of an article that Harvey Mckay wrote many years ago.

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Jack Hubbard: and how he said that in his company he was always eager to hire people who played on a sports team.

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Jack Hubbard: I'm curious about you, and how you look if you look when you look back on your football career, how you feel that might have helped you as you as you've advanced in working with people leading people at the various banks you've been at.

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Thomas Leavitt: That's a great question. I think there are a lot of cliched answers. You can find them in sports or scouting, or lots of endeavors that are worthy out there in terms of how it shapes your character, and how you learn to be a good teammate, how you learn to

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Thomas Leavitt: be humble with your wins, and and not too devastated by your losses.

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Thomas Leavitt: I would say more of the latter. For me it was. It wasn't always easy. I found myself very often in kind of the number 2 position, and having to work hard to get into that number one spot.

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Thomas Leavitt: whether it was in high school or college, but I ultimately did prevail, and I made it to the number one in the depth chart. In the case of University, New Hampshire wildcats, it was as the quarterback and the punter for the division one Aa. Team.

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Thomas Leavitt: I think it was that perseverance that you know things go bad a lot more than they go. Well, and you have to really get up and decide. This is important enough for you to keep going.

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Thomas Leavitt: and what you don't know, in that very condensed period in your youth. For me, you know, I chose the wrong sport. I chose contact, sport of football, and at age 21 as a senior walking out of

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Thomas Leavitt: my last football encounter. I was done with the sport, so I wasn't able to take the sport forward and and apply it any further. But the lessons stayed and some of the relationships are lifetime

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Thomas Leavitt: relationships. And when you get out into the business world you find there are a lot of hard knocks out there as well, particularly on the national level, and you have to be able to adapt and deal with your disappointments and rechannel your energies and come back for more. And so I think endurance is something I've learned

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Thomas Leavitt: in the athletic arena more than anything.

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Jack Hubbard: Oh, talk about endurance!

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Jack Hubbard: Northfield Savings Bank started in 1867. Neither you nor I were around then, but you've had a great history of endurance in a state to your point, which is not the largest state in America, doesn't have the most banks in America, but still serves its customers. Well, talk to us a little bit about North Northfield Savings Bank.

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Thomas Leavitt: Well, I'm very proud of that story. It's a mutual through and through from its very origins and

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Thomas Leavitt: humble surroundings in Northfield, Vermont, Northfield, at the time, and still today is the home of Norwich University, the 1st private military college in the United States, the home of the Rotc.

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Thomas Leavitt: It was a place where Reverend Edward Bournes, of Norwich University, brought the school from the ashes of devastation in Norwich, Vermont, where it got its original name. After a fire broke out and destroyed most of the property. They made the trek to Northfield, and the people in Northfield opened their arms to the school, and they were able to settle in there

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Thomas Leavitt: and then, while he was between presidencies, he decided that the townsfolks of Northfield, Vermont.

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Thomas Leavitt: they had a couple of

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Thomas Leavitt: kind of a upscale trust, oriented banking kind of entities, but they didn't have anything for the common person to be able to safeguard their hard earned wages or to rechannel those into

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Thomas Leavitt: borrowings or credit to begin a household or to fire up their merchant activities. So that's how Northfield Savings Bank got started very humbly with some founders back in the late 18 sixties.

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Thomas Leavitt: and from that day forward that DNA kind of stuck for the 100 years. It was all Northfield all the time.

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Thomas Leavitt: and it wasn't until the 19 sixties that it began to branch out in Central Vermont to places like Barry and Montpelier and Waterbury, and waits field in the Mad River Valley, and then on to Randolph and Bethel as well, and for the next 33 years or so, right up until the early 2 thousands. It stayed that way and continued to grow organically.

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Thomas Leavitt: and then a fateful decision was made by my predecessor, Tom Pelletier, and the board at the time to expand robustly into Chittenden County, my home area, Burlington, Vermont area, the only SMS in the State of Vermont, and they put 5 branches into strategically attractive locations. They worked really hard at picking those spots.

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Thomas Leavitt: and then they began to eke out market share with deposit programs and then ultimately put some mortgage banking folks in some commercial banking folks in and got busy in Chittenden County.

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Thomas Leavitt: So for the last generation we celebrated 20 years a couple years ago in Chittenden County. For that generation we've been building out our presence in Greater Burlington, and during that time there's been attrition from what we call the legacy banks.

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Thomas Leavitt: We don't need to name them. They're easy to look up. They've got big names on their buildings, and they have greater market share today than we do still, but they're no longer calling the shots from Burlington, Vermont. We moved right downtown Burlington 2 years ago.

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Thomas Leavitt: and took over the most prominent building on the marketplace on the corner of College and Church Street, and now occupy all 4 floors of a granite faced building that was erected in 19 0, 2 by Howard National Bank, another proud Burlington institution. So that's been the arc of the growth of Northfield Savings Bank never changed our name

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Thomas Leavitt: on.

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Thomas Leavitt: Never had shareholders other than through the mechanism of the holding company representing the depositors and the corporators of the Mutual Holding company are our governors. They elect themselves. They elect the board. They pay the board through compensation decisions and they chart the bylaws.

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Thomas Leavitt: So it's it's a great community. We've never acquired anyone. We've never been acquired or merged into another entity. And we're 158 years young.

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Jack Hubbard: And your brand is fairly new as well, and I want to really dive into that. But I'm always curious. You're the 5th bank, CEO, that I've had the pleasure of interviewing from community Banks, and one of the things I always ask, Ceos. Because, and especially you, Tom, you're in the throes of finishing your career. But there's a lot of young people out there graduating from college or looking for a new career.

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Jack Hubbard: We've got a lot of baby boomers who are about to leave the industry. I'm curious what you're seeing about young people getting into the business and what you're trying to do at the bank to attract those young people, to start a career in banking.

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Thomas Leavitt: Yeah, I think we're looking for some more accidental bankers, really, because it's just not a career track that today's youth, any more than people of my generation were actively thinking about during their educational years. So they come to us in the summer as interns. Some brilliant young people, men and women

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Thomas Leavitt: that have ties to Vermont most often, and they'll work with us for the summer. They might come back a second summer.

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Thomas Leavitt: We're quite lucky, both of us to find a great career fit. They'll plug in and they'll begin their careers here. It's it's 1 track we have invested a lot of time.

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Thomas Leavitt: We've gotten some help from the outside. But it's really been our own sensibilities in what we call the position grading and salary administration program. It sounds very

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Thomas Leavitt: It sounds very bureaucratic and dry, but what we've done within those ranges and those pay grades is make sure that we've elevated people at the front end of their careers. So in community banking, the frontline community banker, the beginning of the range for that pay grade is $20 and 50 cents and goes up from there and then they climb a notch

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Thomas Leavitt: every couple of years if they're making progress, and they move into a more senior role. And we have 3 regional vice Presidents now overseeing the 3 geographies of our bank that have come up through that route. And so there's this idea that if you come here you could have a sustainable career. You could have a career path.

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Thomas Leavitt: You could stay within one vertical, or you could go horizontal into other functions, whether it's in frontline business lines, or whether it's in our support functions here where I'm sitting today in our Operations Center in Berlin, Vermont. So to the question of youth.

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Thomas Leavitt: We understand the communication tactics have to be different. We have to meet them where they are sometimes that's physical on campus. And we do those job fairs. Sometimes it's in community events getting our own young people involved in the community where there's an intersection going to places like the Boys and Girls Club of Burlington to advance our Nsb. Equity framework, and to make sure we have pathways

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Thomas Leavitt: for more diverse and inclusive representation in our company. Those are all things that we've been doing. We have a young Hr team

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Thomas Leavitt: they really understand, along with our young marketing team, how to communicate socially through other media. So we're doing our best to be the authentic Northfield Savings Bank. That is multi-generational.

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Thomas Leavitt: We go back 8 generations with our customer base. We have folks that are in the elder demographic. But we've been attracting younger customers both on the household and on the commercial side. And so when young folks see that we're not stale. We're not. Yesterday. We have the

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Thomas Leavitt: the latest in technology tools for them to use and for our customers to use. We have modern facilities. We invest in them.

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Thomas Leavitt: We're no longer in the great resignation moment where jobs are fleeting. People are looking for security again. And we have found over the last 2 years that we're attracting those types of individuals where the 1st year, 18 months out of pandemic, I think it was rugged for us and for everyone out there in the banking space.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. And and thank goodness, we have community banks that have come out of this pandemic and other issues in very strong ways. And yours is certainly no exception. I'm curious. We'll do a little bit of a lightning round here.

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Jack Hubbard: One of the things you talked about was the history of the bank. But when I go on your website, it's extremely modern. And your brand is very interesting. Builders, makers, and doers. So let's start there. Talk about your current brand, and what that means to doers, make builders, makers, and doers.

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Thomas Leavitt: We found, and when, I say we, the collective Northfield Savings Bank at the turn of this century, that

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Thomas Leavitt: the device that they were using to brand the bank was evolved into this concept of a flying mascot, a flying pig. You know this is where pigs fly. This is where anything is possible. It resonated very well. It was very popular with a lot of our consumers. They thought it was unique. They identified with it our employees identified with it. They starred in some of the bank's commercials.

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Thomas Leavitt: and I was very reticent when I came on board in 2014 to do anything to to take that mascot out for a roast, so to speak. But we did look hard at the data that we were collecting on a segment that was very important to the future of the bank.

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Thomas Leavitt: The bank had already, through many generations, secured the consumer, but the new consumers

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Thomas Leavitt: had locked in with the competition, meaning the non customer was so deeply and and so

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Thomas Leavitt: in a way sticky with their their current institution.

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Thomas Leavitt: The moves that we made at Merchants Bank, for instance, in the late nineties and the early 2 thousands with a program we call free Checking for life.

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Thomas Leavitt: which brought in

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Thomas Leavitt: large numbers of new households. So the bank went from one in 7 households in the State of Vermont to one in 4 during that era, because people still were mobile in terms of their primary consumer checking relationship. That's no longer the case. So we realized this bank did that with the build out of Chittenham County. Ultimately, they're gonna have to turn the corner toward the enterprise

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Thomas Leavitt: that began under my predecessor. And then over the last 10 years we've doubled the size of the bank organically by really emphasizing that 1st of all, take care of your base.

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Thomas Leavitt: the consumer that got you here, that household, the mortgage borrower

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Thomas Leavitt: individual investment customers that work with our Northfield investment services folks.

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Thomas Leavitt: but really build out the commercial banking team. And since 2021, what we call our enterprise and government banking team

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Thomas Leavitt: and the builders, makers, doers began as a kind of a test messaging concept. When we rebranded the bank in 2017. So the logo changed. We retired the pig, but we did not. It was not

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Thomas Leavitt: anything that led to a lot of people being upset because we said any remnants of of this brand that you love.

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Thomas Leavitt: You keep you display, you promote, you stay with. We're okay with that.

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Thomas Leavitt: But in the meantime we're going to take wing in a new direction.

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Thomas Leavitt: and we're going to come out with some branding that are the enterprise clientele, tell us.

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Thomas Leavitt: gives us a more professional edge, and really begins to symbolize our intent strategically. So builders, makers, doers, grew out of that, because not only did we consider ourselves builders

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Thomas Leavitt: of products and services, makers of a strong value proposition, and doers in delivering what it takes to give all customers access to the bank.

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Thomas Leavitt: We wanted to go find the builders, makers, and doers in Vermont

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Thomas Leavitt: that would be attracted to our story. So in the building community, we're very prominent with the Associated General contractors of Vermont.

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Thomas Leavitt: We're essentially the lead bank and their their events and programs.

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Thomas Leavitt: And in the makers space we have an alliance with the Vermont Manufacturing extension center affiliated with Vermont State University, and we have a Vmec makers fund that helps emerging manufacturing enterprises move forward. And in the doers space we consider that all

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Thomas Leavitt: non manufacturing, non building types of functions which is the large majority. It's professional services, it's education, it's government, it's law. It's accounting

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Thomas Leavitt: it's engineering. So we we're very busy over there as well identifying prospects. So we have prospect pools for each one of those buckets.

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Thomas Leavitt: And we're actively working that through our Crm

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Thomas Leavitt: which is integrated with our core banking software, and we are actively campaigning and communicating through what we call unsolicited proposals to each of those 3 sectors. And it's been working for us.

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Thomas Leavitt: We can talk about the length of the sales cycle, perhaps in another question, but that that answers your your immediate question about the pivot on the brand.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, pivoting the brand is one thing, and that certainly is a costly endeavor in terms of time and budget. And you've got all kinds of new signage and things like that. But you've really made this come to life with the makers fund. I love what you're doing there, and I think a lot of community banks could really benefit from your knowledge here. What is the makers fund? What is that involved.

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Thomas Leavitt: It's it's a modest start with our friends over in Vermont manufacturing and the Vermont manufacturing Enterprise Center.

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Thomas Leavitt: it's it's

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Thomas Leavitt: a pool of funds that are made available through Vmec to through their extension center, to emerging enterprises that qualify, based on some attributes that Vmec sees in their ability to potentially sustain and build their fortunes going forward. So it's an experiment in this 1st 2 year installment to see how well that gains traction

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Thomas Leavitt: with an idea that this could become a more significant investment in community and market development going forward. So this is all through the Vermont manufacturing extension center, and they do the work. Once we've provided the funding, and then one of our

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Thomas Leavitt: senior vice Presidents, Rosemary White.

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Thomas Leavitt: is on the board of Vmec. She was the proponent that brought the opportunity to the bank and advocated for it. We like to do that also with our staff, if if they're if they have skin in the game, and they're all in on a concept in the community or in the market, and they have some inroads

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Thomas Leavitt: and have made some contacts. Then we do our best to explore that and see with it. So this is just getting off the ground in 2,025. It's part of Vmex anniversary year, and we're gonna see what we can do with it. Going forward.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, it's it's outstanding. And as you mentioned it, 2021 you made what would be for any size bank a significant shift for a community bank. It's just absolutely huge to go more in the direction of commercial and more proactivity. And you know, it's involved people and products and technology. And I'd love to start at the people level

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Jack Hubbard: thinking back to 2021 and making the shift. How much did you have to go out and find new people versus having people inside the bank currently to be able to kind of make a shift to more commercial and more proactive sales.

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Thomas Leavitt: We've done both, Jack. The the impetus

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Thomas Leavitt: for the pivot toward commercial and enterprise and government

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Thomas Leavitt: really was something that predated 2021 and the 2 prior strategic plans. So we were able to get some of the building blocks in place.

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Thomas Leavitt: One example would be our online banking platform that we partner with Q. 2. Out of Austin, Texas. We had the basic retail oriented, although very robust

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Thomas Leavitt: online banking platform, which is free for each customer. But we've invested in the corporate platform. So we were putting all those tools in place. We were building out the product set. We were making sure that our commercial team had a brand new loan policy in 2020, so that it really where the rubber meets the road in terms of

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Thomas Leavitt: commercial credit, that we could be more robust and muscular there, and understand that we could move safely from what had been a conservative risk. Appetite to a moderate risk. Appetite in commercial lending. These are some of the precursors to what we did in 2021, but 2021 is when we came out with our enterprise, 24 strategic plan. That's when we laid in another layer of resources. So

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Thomas Leavitt: a woman who had been one of our leaders in commercial banking, she was a top lender here in Central Vermont. Her grandfather was one of my predecessors as a president of Northfield Savings Bank. She was the lead producer with the paycheck protection program

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Thomas Leavitt: she understands her clientele. She literally has a

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Thomas Leavitt: an encyclopedic memory of all the movers and shakers, and throughout this several county area, and still youthful.

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Thomas Leavitt: But we asked her to step over into a role senior Vp. Of enterprise and government banking, and to take this new initiative forward. So she's added people from the outside, but people familiar to me to support her in cash management.

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Thomas Leavitt: government banking corporate services.

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Thomas Leavitt: And now business development. So that unit is really out there on the tip of the spear for us in the marketplace.

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Thomas Leavitt: calling the shots in terms of strategic communications, and then distributing and coordinating, collaborating with other business lines.

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Thomas Leavitt: and we really have a champion there. So I think that's an important story, and her name's Megan Sissio.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, it is a great story, and and.

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Jack Hubbard: as Paul Harvey said, there's always a rest of the story, and part of the rest of the story is the technology you talk about. I'm speaking next week at Indiana Bankers Association's Mega Conference.

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Jack Hubbard: and I'm going to talk about technology a little bit. And one of the segments of the program my speech has to do with Crm, and it's a fact that about 65% of all Crm initiatives fail.

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Jack Hubbard: They just go nowhere, and it's a complete waste of money. But you talked about Crm, and so I'm curious. How have you made your Crm at the bank work. In other words, and when I say work, I mean adoption that people actually are using it as part of their sales process.

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Thomas Leavitt: 2 word answers frustratingly, slowly.

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Thomas Leavitt: Like any other Crm initiative I had. I had a meeting in January of 2,013. I'd been in the job not even 4 months.

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Thomas Leavitt: and I sat with some folks in a conference room like this up in at Taft Corners, in Williston.

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Thomas Leavitt: And I said, We've we've got to have a Crm. We don't have a formal system for identifying prospects, turning them into leads and then working them through the pipeline, as I mentioned a little while ago. It's a very long sales cycle. If we make a commitment today in January 2,013, maybe by the time I leave here we'll actually have a robust operational crm, and it's just about work that way. We we looked at all the shiny objects first, st

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Thomas Leavitt: and then we did a competitive Rfp. Identifying 4 or 5 applications and solutions.

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Thomas Leavitt: we decided, after consulting with some highly respected peer banks in New England and talking about our in at that time incumbent core software vendor. That integration was important. And so we defaulted ultimately not only to doing a full core conversion here within the same in within the same vendor family, Jack Henry.

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Thomas Leavitt: So we went from the Cif. 2020 platform to the Silver Lake platform, and we had a very successful all hands on deck.

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Thomas Leavitt: company moment. In 2,020 and 2,021 we had to get clear of pandemic enough to restart the project, and we extended the timeline on it.

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Thomas Leavitt: But we implemented it 4 years ago this month. It's gone extremely well. We've had a lot of day 2 projects as part of that commitment going in. Once we knew it was going to be Jack Henry.

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Thomas Leavitt: We elected to have their synapses Crm application, so that we could have that full integration going into and then through core conversion. So we've been active for about 5 years. And what we did culturally is make sure we got every user, every support person in a room with people from Jack Henry

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Thomas Leavitt: to work through the details of building the Crm. On the front end.

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Thomas Leavitt: so that all the working fields that they would be touching every day would be familiar to them because they would help build it. So that took a good year on the front end just to get that right. And then it was a matter of training, encouragement, moral suasion.

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Thomas Leavitt: not too much of a stick, maybe, now and then just a little bit of one just to wake them up. But we didn't do anything too punitive if people were slow to adopt. But we ultimately got there. And now everyone in commercial banking, all of the commercial banking off. Excuse me, community banking officers that lead our branches, our mortgage team, and our enterprise and government banking folks.

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Thomas Leavitt: They're they all track their sales, development and their customer relationships through that Crm platform. But it is not an easy thing

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Thomas Leavitt: to keep from dying because it always wants to die.

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Thomas Leavitt: It's human behavior that wants to go back to their own shoeboxes and their own tracking mechanisms and outlook and other means of

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Thomas Leavitt: of keeping customers organized. But we've insisted that that really, if it, if it hasn't happened in Crm, it hasn't happened. Period. There's no history.

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Thomas Leavitt: So that's the culture that I think we've been able to arrive at. I thank our team led by Tim

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Thomas Leavitt: and and it because we have such terrific business analysts and and application support people and information technology that they won't let a system die either, if they know the company is absolutely committed to it. They keep up with the support. So that's a little bit of our long and winding road on Crm.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, and Crm is certainly one aspect of it, and you and Tim and I'm sure your executive team continue to struggle and work through this new phenomenon that's on us. And that's AI. I'm curious. I hear different things from different bankers. We don't use it. We're very wide open in using it. I'm curious about very specific things, because we're talking about sales here.

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Jack Hubbard: How have you and your sales teams

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Jack Hubbard: begun to integrate whether it's chat, gpt, or perplexity, or copilot. How have you begun to integrate AI into the sales? Mix.

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Thomas Leavitt: We're just starting.

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Thomas Leavitt: we're. We're 1st of all exploring a current relationship with vertical IQ so that we can break down the sectors that I was referring to earlier, we might have these 3 broader buckets. But then there's then you've got all the categories. So that we can break it down further by industrial classification and try to understand each of those in terms of the the industry dynamics. And that's where AI can feed a lot of information to us.

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Thomas Leavitt: we are looking at copilot

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Thomas Leavitt: in terms of workflows and routines. We have not yet attempted to overlay that with the Crm

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Thomas Leavitt: to have any kind of predictive software working with that database, and we are looking forward to exploring that. But we're not there yet. I know. Others may be ahead of us in this race, but we certainly want to be careful through our Information Security Council. We spend a lot of time on AI policy.

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Thomas Leavitt: So making sure that we built the guardrails before we start utilizing the tools. And that's a cultural process as well. So all of us are now using AI on our mobile devices. We're using it at home now instead of a Google search. When you type in any kind of search, it doesn't matter what the search engine is whether it's Bing or Google. You're going to get an AI synopsis right off the bat with some very useful information.

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Thomas Leavitt: And so I imagine a day where we do take a real strong leap forward with our proprietary prospect pool, and we start to have profiling done on our prospects such that we know them before we know them, without getting spooky or intrusive about it, with the clientele.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's go back. You you mentioned a government and enterprise banking. Let's talk about that a little bit. Talk about the makeup, who you, who you call on, how you call on them, etcetera.

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Thomas Leavitt: Sure

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Thomas Leavitt: enterprise came out of the need to make sure that as we gain traction and success with our commercial banking team

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Thomas Leavitt: that we didn't leave our roots behind.

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Thomas Leavitt: So it's only natural when you have successful commercial bankers lenders that they accumulate portfolio, and they continue to work up the food chain.

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Thomas Leavitt: And now we have relationships that within our top 10 and top 20 borrowers were not there 10 years ago. They're they're relationships. We've developed just together in the last 10 years.

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Thomas Leavitt: So we're we're starting to have success. A commercial lender can do well, can perform to our expectations

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Thomas Leavitt: with fewer clients, and therefore the danger is that you're going to not be focused

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Thomas Leavitt: on the people that got you to the dance, which are the 100,000, the 200, the $250,000 relationships that are just getting rolling with the bank sometimes. Well, less than that, maybe it's a $10,000 used equipment loan to start. So we needed to make sure there was a group that was looking out for the smaller enterprises. So that's 1 that's 1 of their charters

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Thomas Leavitt: within that, though we also understood that we were doing very well with select towns, school districts, utility, commissions, etc, throughout our service area, because they liked the bank. They knew the bank. They banked with us personally, but we didn't have any formal programming and government banking.

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Thomas Leavitt: So what we did is

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Thomas Leavitt: we rebranded Enterprise banking to Enterprise and Government banking. We brought in a top Vp level government banker from another institution, with a lot of experience to work with Megan and her team.

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Thomas Leavitt: and Megan herself, our leader for enterprise and Government banking, has the greatest

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Thomas Leavitt: of at bats among the commercial team in terms of dealing with municipalities. And so we're attending all the events. We've branded a landing page on our website with all the tools that are needed for folks

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Thomas Leavitt: in the government and public sectors. And we're making a lot of contacts. And we're continuing to leverage the relationships we've been successful with in Central Vermont. As we move into a more competitive sphere up in Chittenden County.

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Thomas Leavitt: and there's a finite number of cities and towns in the State of Vermont. It's 251. So we can also expand geographically beyond our current footprint. And we've done that in some cases because of our remote banking tools. So we're applying all of that. We're not the largest. But I think

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Thomas Leavitt: at this point we're hungry and we are earnest, and we are authentic in our desire to go out and accumulate more government banking relationships. The thing you have to be prepared for your listeners have to be prepared for if they haven't taken this leap is when you get into the deposit side of Government banking, you can see big swings. You can see

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Thomas Leavitt: big deposits coming in for a period of time, and then you see them flowing out sometimes as quickly or down the road. So you have to be prepared to work out with your asset liability and funds management those cycles. We've

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Thomas Leavitt: had enough cycles now that we see how it's it's developing for us. We know when we're going to have to tap other liquidity sources. If we should see a near term outflow of deposits in that space, and we're comfortable with that risk.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. And and you talked about giving some advice. I'm curious about this advice. I talked to a lot of community bankers from Banks, your size and smaller.

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Jack Hubbard: and I asked them about Treasury management and and kind of a formal department, or a couple of people that actually do the work over there, and I get a lot of comments about. Well, you know, we can't afford another fte or 2, etc, etc. And so they have their commercial bankers sell Treasury management. You mentioned Treasury management a little bit earlier. I'm curious about how you have approached having perhaps a separate Treasury management area.

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Thomas Leavitt: Yeah, we've brought in some administrative support to work the cash management functions of the company.

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Thomas Leavitt: And we're making sure that we're layering in the tools, the positive pay, the fed corporate payer report preparing for fed now at some point to make sure that when we're looking at the velocity of funds movement and the needs that any entity has, whether it's public or private, that we understand their essential treasury functions.

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Thomas Leavitt: But we we're still building in that direction. So we that would be the next player to plug in to the Enterprise and Government Banking group, and we'll continue to make sure that our commercial banking folks are sophisticated in terms of understanding treasury management needs of the clientele that they have, and working with our enterprise and government banking folks to make sure they're plugged into the right tools.

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Thomas Leavitt: the right safeguards, and the right array of accounts, whether they be 0 balance accounts, operating accounts, payroll accounts, lines of credit and sweeps

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Thomas Leavitt: the insured cash suite program to protect previously uninsured deposits

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Thomas Leavitt: all of those tools, the collateralized repo products. They're all in place to allow people to do effective Treasury management here at Northfield Savings Bank.

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Jack Hubbard: Yeah. And I. So so when I ask the question, a lot of bankers will say to me, Well, I can't afford it. What should I do? And my answer is put in the mindset of a commercial lender

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Jack Hubbard: that just because they don't borrow and they'll come up against this a lot just because a customer doesn't borrow, they all deposit and so arm them with a few questions around Treasury management. Don't pummel the customer with products.

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Jack Hubbard: but ask a few questions, and then maybe bring an expert back in government banking or enterprise. Or what have you? So it can be successful even without a Full Treasury management, cadre of people on the street. As long as your commercial bankers have a mindset that if they, if customer doesn't borrow, at least they do deposit, and there's ways to help them in that particular.

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Thomas Leavitt: Absolutely the liabilities side of the balance sheet is equally important to the asset side of our balance sheet, and we emphasize that, and I think, longer term. We all grew up in analog era in the early days of banking, where we literally take a sketch pad out, and we would map out the cash flows and the Treasury functions in every one of our clients, and and do a bit of a

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Thomas Leavitt: a Venn diagram of of where everything was supposed to land at a given time. Now we have the tools to be able to to set that up

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Thomas Leavitt: and automate it. So

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Thomas Leavitt: that's a matter of education, getting more of our bankers up to a level where they understand all of the

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Thomas Leavitt: tools and solutions that we provide. And that's part of the professional education that we're attempting right now. We're using some of the downtime in our branches. They're just not as busy as they once were. We're we're growing.

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Thomas Leavitt: We have more transactions. We have more accounts and relationships.

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Thomas Leavitt: but fewer people walking into branch lobbies, as is the case across the industry. So we're taking time. 5 days a week, lighter on the the 5th day, but certainly 4 days a week, with more intensive training before the doors open in the morning in our branches to get people up to speed on these functions so that they are a better referral source when somebody walks in at the point of contact. And I think that's important as well.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, you brought up the branches, and I think you have 13 of them, and and one of the things I wanted to ask about is in this whole rebranding and and focus on more business orientation. I'm curious about the branches and what the branch manager's role is, and how it's changed as you've migrated to a more proactive culture.

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Thomas Leavitt: Well, it's changed a lot. We.

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Thomas Leavitt: I think the institution because of the success in Central Vermont being the the Community Bank that people trusted.

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Thomas Leavitt: Every year in Central Vermont the the bank would earn honors is the most trusted or the strongest bank, etc.

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Thomas Leavitt: For 3 out of the last 4 years we've earned statewide

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Thomas Leavitt: the distinction that the readers of Vermont Business Magazine hand out in their independent survey of best banks statewide.

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Thomas Leavitt: So that that's a pride factor for our folks to to recognize that these are essentially business people by definition that are telling us that the vision that we had for being the Preeminent bank for enterprise

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Thomas Leavitt: in Vermont is actually coming to fruition. So we want to fulfill

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Thomas Leavitt: that commitment and that that promise.

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Thomas Leavitt: So you have to understand that taking paper over the transaction line. We don't call it teller line, and we don't call our frontline folks tellers. We call them community bankers. So the the line is no longer a teller line. It's a transaction line, but you don't just merely wait passively to take paper over the

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Thomas Leavitt: transaction line and give some kind of paper back as confirmation. You will do that during the day. You'll do it less and less as your career evolves. So we really need to make sure that that

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Thomas Leavitt: the concept of universal banker, though we don't use that term so much anymore. But the idea that you will be well rounded that you'll do more than transactions. You'll do. Platform, you'll do consumer lending. You'll be a troubleshooter for other business lines, and you'll work directly with all the full range of our clientele. That's the aspiration. Do we live up to it in every branch every day? Of course not.

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Thomas Leavitt: There's always staffing pressures. There's always people having human developments in their lives. We're always wanting to make sure we keep up with the level of customer care that's earned us some very high customer service marks. So

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Thomas Leavitt: there's a conventional aspect to branch banking that you cannot get away from. You're going to have a building that needs to be secure every day. You're going to have to have dual controls. You're going to have to manage the cash.

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Thomas Leavitt: You're going to have to do the basics of of the phones and the transaction line activity. But there's a whole lot more you can do with the time that the customers have given you to add value back to the customer. So that's the emphasis. There's very specific programming that our regional Vice Presidents and our

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Thomas Leavitt: Vice President of direct banking are doing with the team, but they're they're really excited. We had a woman retire from the bank, Deb Karen, last September, after 46 years, coming up through community banking. She was our Vice President. She led the group.

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Thomas Leavitt: but she was part of the effort to regionalize the leadership to 3 new generation leaders that are now regional Vps, and that energy is kind of amplifying down into the each of the branches. And we're feeling some of that come back up. It's it's been a very healthy dynamic. It's not always easy for these folks to staff and operate a branch every day, but we give them a lot of credit.

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Jack Hubbard: One of the toughest jobs in banking. I mentioned this to a banking school that I recently taught at, you know a branch manager walks in and never knows what's going to happen. Every customer that walks in could be really good or really not so good. And you've always got people calling in sick, and it's a tough. It's a tough job, and it's great to see that you still feel that the branches are very much alive, and you've modified the way you're looking at them, but they're still. They're still around helping your customers.

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Thomas Leavitt: The beauty of having just 13 full service branches plus the building I'm in, which is our Operations Center, built as a state of the art data hub in 2,015. So the 14 buildings. But the the beauty of that is that it's only 14 buildings. We don't have what some of the legacy banks have. They've closed out perfectly

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Thomas Leavitt: viable branches in some of our communities to our benefit.

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Thomas Leavitt: We're not going anywhere. We haven't left any of these communities. Once the commitment's made, the feeling in Vermont is Northfield Savings Bank is in it for the long haul, and once that once that sentiment sets in. You certainly don't want to violate it.

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Thomas Leavitt: but that trust has a way of of multiplying through generations. So that's the commitment that we made. Yes, some are perhaps performing below

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Thomas Leavitt: potential for their market, but we work with them.

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Thomas Leavitt: and we don't have a we don't have an up or out philosophy here in terms of performance.

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Jack Hubbard: It's good to hear.

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Jack Hubbard: I've talked to Neil Stevens down. He's the CEO at Oconee State Bank.

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Jack Hubbard: Jill Castilla down in Oklahoma, and several others, Brad Elliott, at Equity Bank, in Kansas, and I asked him this question, so I'll ask you this question to kind of wrap things up.

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Jack Hubbard: There are articles that you read online Linkedin, other papers, the death of community banking.

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Jack Hubbard: What do you say to that? Where's community banking? Now? Where is it headed?

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Thomas Leavitt: Well, if- if you if you seed the playing field in community banking to Fintechs, you're done.

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Thomas Leavitt: you're not gonna be able to compete with them behind the scenes, with everything that they do. Well, they're killer apps, the reasons that they're in everybody's

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Thomas Leavitt: telephones. Mobile phone.

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Thomas Leavitt: See? There was a generational word right there. Who's ever using the word telephone anymore? But

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Thomas Leavitt: community banking to us is an essential go to spot. It's the physical embodiment of the bank. It's the brand. It's it's the 1st impression.

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Thomas Leavitt: These are dedicated, talented bankers, that you can come and access in person.

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Thomas Leavitt: You can get your problem solved.

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Thomas Leavitt: You know that if you're going through pandemic.

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Thomas Leavitt: or if you're going through the devastating flooding that we had here in 2023, or 2,024

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Thomas Leavitt: that you've got a bank that's still gonna be there, and they'll be there for you, and they'll be able to work through some of your difficulties with you, the modifications that we did during

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Thomas Leavitt: Ppp era, the modifications that we did during the catastrophic climate events here.

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Thomas Leavitt: this is working with your community working with your stakeholders, which 1st and foremost are your customers, and then your communities. And so that community bank

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Thomas Leavitt: presence, the branch in its hometown

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Thomas Leavitt: is the essence of Northfield Savings Bank, and they end up being the repository for the opportunities and the challenges that we face, and they are able to both take referrals and and work on the service end of a

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Thomas Leavitt: of a successful sales event in commercial banking, or enterprise, or government or mortgage banking, but they're also able to refer out to those other business lines, and they do it on a daily basis, including our Northfield investment services folks. So

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Thomas Leavitt: we may be the last one standing, I guess, at some point, but we're committed to the bricks and mortar and to the people in them and the communities that surround them here in Vermont, and it may be somewhat endemic to the State of Vermont. I don't know. I don't want to give us too much in the realm of exceptionalism. There are a lot of us that spend good parts of our lives here, and there are some that are brand new, that are every bit as Vermonter as I am.

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Thomas Leavitt: and we respect that as well. So we're we're trying to understand what their needs are.

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Thomas Leavitt: whether it's new Americans or folks that have come in due to pandemic flight or climate refugees, or that type of thing. So the branch is where they land. If they want a human experience with Nsb. And the human experience is one of our greatest advantages.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, we started this by you mentioning your retirement, and I'd be a bad interviewer if I didn't at least say, what are you thinking what's next for Tom Levitt.

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Thomas Leavitt: Well, that's that's kind of you to ask.

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Thomas Leavitt: We've had 12 other baby boomers line up for retirement in the last 2 years.

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Thomas Leavitt: and I'm getting some very good feedback from those that have already headed out. We have stayed close. I look forward to spending time with them.

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Thomas Leavitt: My wife is a retired lead math teacher from Burlington High School, and our our children are in Washington, DC. And Atlanta, along with our beautiful daughter-in-law.

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Thomas Leavitt: and we'll spend more time with them.

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Thomas Leavitt: I like to tell people that my next assignment has already been accepted, and that is to be the assistant to the caretaker of Rancho Diane.

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Thomas Leavitt: My wife's name is Diane.

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Thomas Leavitt: She is the caretaker, and she's got a few assignments laid out for me there, so I'm looking forward to that. There may be a board or 2, whether I've done a lot of nonprofits over the years rotated off most of those boards, but now there are a couple out in industry that might catch my eye based on my prior background.

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Thomas Leavitt: so that's probably what's next. Read a lot. Take care of the body along with the the mind and the soul, and listen to some great music, and enjoy the surroundings that we have in this

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Thomas Leavitt: just this beautiful place we call home in Vermont. Thanks for asking.

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Jack Hubbard: Well, it's a great, it's a great state. And you're right. I think that those of us that are more senior and have been around. Our expertise doesn't go away. It may be going just in a different direction. And so all the best to you, Tom, and thank you very much for sharing your story. It's a great story, and really appreciate your time today.

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Thomas Leavitt: Jack. It's been a true pleasure meeting with you. Thanks for your broadcast and the education that you give to all of us out here in the banking world. It's an inspiration, and it provides a lot of hope. Thanks.

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Jack Hubbard: Okay, thank you, Tom. That was fabulous. Was that okay with you?

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Thomas Leavitt: I'll turn to. I'll turn to Tim. He's gonna make an appearance on camera. He's he's a he's the unsung hero on our.

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Jack Hubbard: Thank you for your help, Tim.

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Thomas Leavitt: Yeah, no worries. Yeah, thank you. So, yeah, I I think it felt good to me. You get on a a topic. And there's so much queued up in your head it's hard to slow down, but I hope that didn't affect your quality of your your product at all.

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Jack Hubbard: No, not all. You're you're a great guest, and I think one of the things you know. I've done this a long time, and one of the things that you always worry about is, do I have enough questions, and are they going to give me one word answers, and you were fabulous, and you get you told your story very well. This program will be out on May 21, st

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Jack Hubbard: so we will send to you ahead of this some marketing links that you can put on your website. You can do anything you want with it and to amplify the program. So thank you very much again for your time, and if we don't talk, and hopefully we will all the best in your retirement. You've certainly more than earned it. Given a lot of career happening to banking. So thanks again.

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Thomas Leavitt: Jack, thanks so much, and take care, and Godspeed.

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Jack Hubbard: Alright. Thank you, Tom. See you bye.