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10 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | March 28, 2022 ON THE RECORD ©2022 CliftonLarsonAllen LLP. Investment advisory services are offered through CliftonLarsonAllen Wealth Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. CPAs | CONSULTANTS | WEALTH ADVISORS West Hartford 860-561-4000 CLAconnect.com We'll get you there. Where is your there? CLA brings balance to get you where you want to go. Q. Are there plans to grow that number? A. Absolutely. Over the next one to three years I can see our team growing anywhere from three to five bankers. Q. In the $10 million to $75 million range, what types of companies are you looking to do business with? A. It's all different types of businesses from manufacturing, technology, health care and services industries. That's the exciting part of that segment. That's our feeder system, bringing in customers at that size and then as they grow, they turn into our middle market and larger corporate customers over time. Q. What are you seeing in terms of business loan demand? A. On the investment real estate side I'm seeing high demand in terms of [investors] looking to lock in rates now. There is definitely opportunity in the marketplace with all the different asset classes. The first six months of the year so far we've had a lot of success in growing our investment real estate business. Customers are a little anxious right now because they aren't sure where rates are going. Despite the recent interest rate hikes, rates are still at all-time lows. Six percent seems like a high rate but it's actually relative to where the market had been prior to 2008. I think people are seeing that as an opportunity. There is still a lot of cash out there, so our investment real estate customers are looking for opportunities. On the commercial and industrial side, we haven't seen the impact of interest rates from a lending standpoint. Q. What size loans does Wells Fargo focus on? A. Our sweet spot in terms of commercial real estate loans is $10 million to $100 million. From a commercial and industrial lending side, we'll do lines of credit and term loans anywhere from $5 million to the upper hundreds of millions of dollars. It all depends on the type of deal and if we are holding it on our balance sheet or doing it as a syndicated loan with other banks. Q. When you talk about investment real estate, does that include activity from developers building new projects, or just investors buying existing assets? A. It's both, but we focus on stabilized properties for the most part. We will do construction and permanent financing. We are looking at asset classes like multifamily, where we see a lot of opportunity in Connecticut because of people moving out of the city and up north in Connecticut. There is still not enough rental properties out there and you continue to see a tremendous amount of multifamily construction. Other asset classes that we are looking for is manufacturing and industrial with all the supply chain opportunities that are out there with the Amazons and Walmarts. Lou Gallo talks with one of his employees. Gallo plans to be in the Connecticut market about 2.5 days per week. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED