Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | August 1, 2022 9 ON THE RECORD | Q&A and I have partnered here and we want to do more in Boston. Jim was running Boston from New Haven and he needs to be there to grow that market. So, Jim has now picked up all of New England and I report to him. Q. KeyBank is still a relatively new brand in Connecticut. It only entered the market about six years ago. Is brand recognition still a challenge? A. I think in business and consumer banking our brand is pretty good. In middle market banking I don't think we have a good brand or a bad brand, I don't think we've historically had the right people in this market with the right solutions. I've hired four bankers on the commercial team over the past two years, and we've had a lot more success on the commercial development side. Q. Do you see any changes in the short term? What about long term? A. I think we are going to continue to invest in people, add more business bankers. We have had a fair amount of success in attracting talent and we plan to continue to do that. We are strategically hiring in the commercial bank. We are open for business and hiring in our consumer and retail bank. We are also actively looking to add some people in our private banking business down in Fairfield County. Q. What are you seeing in terms of business loan demand? A. The first six months of the year have been really good. I'm concerned about the second half of the year. Our portfolio has held up remarkably well, but I don't see the same type of activity with higher interest rates putting a damper on things, and concerns about a recession. So, I think companies have good balance sheets and liquidity, but I feel like they might be waiting a few months to be opportunistic through things like acquisitions. I actually think there are a lot of people looking forward to a little bit of a slow down, just because of challenges around supply chain issues, hiring people to support the kind of growth that has gone on. The growth that has occurred during the last five years has been extraordinary. The only thing that has prevented companies from growing more has been inability to hire people. Q. Do you think we are in or headed toward a recession? A. I do. I think we will find out when we are coming out of it. If you just look at earnings that are coming out, they are softer, supply chain issues have taken their toll, inflation hasn't showed up in a lot of the earnings yet but that will happen. I think the Fed will do what it can to orchestrate a soft landing, and this will not be a Volcker recession or anything like that, it will be something where the economy slows for a couple of quarters and then we start working our way back to growth. Q. What's your average day like? A. I have two bankers in Norwalk, two in Hartford and two more in New Haven. I'm probably splitting my time between New Haven and Hartford, and I will try to get down to Norwalk every couple of weeks. I spend a lot of time in my car. My mileage report will demonstrate that. I like being client facing. If you are in the office all the time, you are probably not being productive. I encourage my team to get out and get in front of folks. Q. KeyBank recently shrunk and moved its downtown Hartford office from 100 Pearl St. to Goodwin Square. What prompted that move and how do you view office space in this new age of hybrid and remote work? A. The most important part of that move was to put our business, private and commercial bankers in the same space so we could collaborate and work together, share ideas and refer businesses back and forth to each other. Previously those teams were split between our Hartford and Manchester offices. Now, once or twice a week, we have people coming into the office, sitting down and grabbing a cup of coffee to share ideas and collaborate. You can see the success of people who show up to the office. They perform better than people who don't. I think it's important that people get into the office. The new office also gave us the opportunity to redesign the space to work better with this hybrid model. There are a lot less assigned offices and more shared space. Q. Looking at the Hartford and New Haven markets, what do you view as the biggest challenges and opportunities? A. The biggest challenge is having enough bankers to meet with all the different companies in the region and probably getting our brand out there. We have some really good bankers, some of the very strongest in the market. There are a lot of companies out there that we don't bank. We aren't a market share leader so that's an opportunity and that's why we view this as a growth market. 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