Two announcements last week in the Ulster County banking community brought the latest local developments in the fierce struggle between America’s national banks and its community banks. Rondout Savings Bank announced a new CEO and president, Cheryl Bowers, the first woman to hold the position in the local bank’s 150-year history. And Bank of America announced it would be closing its Woodstock branch next April.
Bank of America has 4623 locations, 31 within a 50-mile radius of Woodstock. Rondout Savings has five — three in Kingston-Ulster and one each in West Hurley and Hyde Park. As of the end of June of this year, Bank of America customer deposits of $1.27 trillion, of which $428.2 million, or slightly more than three-tenths of one percent of the total, was deposited in five Ulster County branch offices in Kingston, Ulster, Ellenville, New Paltz and Woodstock. Meanwhile, Rondout Savings’ Ulster County deposits on the same date were $293.5 million, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
“The dollars may be smaller, but the commitment’s bigger,” said Jim Davenport, retiring at year’s end as CEO of Rondout Savings, the mutual savings institution he has headed for the past eleven years. Rondout Savings’ identity and culture are inextricably tied to the region it serves. The bank, owned not by stockholders but by its members, gives away ten percent of its post-taxes profits to local community causes each year. The financial system needs both community banks and national banks, he added.
Unlike most areas of the nation, the Hudson Valley’s locally controlled community banks and credit unions have been doing better than holding their own in recent years against their much larger competitors, at least in terms of market share of deposits. Nowhere is the difference in philosophy and culture between the two kinds of banks more obvious than in their attitudes toward branch banking.
Bank of America is intent on enlarging its range of financial services, building out its digital features and encouraging mobile deposits while closing brick-and-mortar branches. It’s seeking greater digital engagement, which reduces costs and builds the bank’s profits. The human side of the business will be mainly sustained through Salesforce-type solutions involving customer relationship management (CRM), whose purpose is explained as “meeting customer expectations.” At BofA, expect to interface with your relationship manager about your banking, investment and asset management needs.
Meanwhile, Rondout Savings, like most local independent banks, stresses the strength of its historic relationships with its customers and its connections with the community, while not neglecting technological evolution. Deposits and business loans in brick-and-mortar branches still remain the heart of its banking relationships. “Here today, here tomorrow” is one of its slogans.
Small companies are “the sweet spot” for the bank’s business, Davenport said. “We’ve always been about singles and doubles as well as home runs.” He’d love a home run, he conceded, but IBM’s long gone from the mid-Hudson area.
Like other community banking institutions of Ulster County, Rondout Savings Bank considers itself “relationship-oriented.” With its all-local approach, it thinks it will align well with millennials, who are said to value experiences more than simple transactions.
As of midyear, the BofA Woodstock branch office had deposits of $107,443,000, a not inconsiderable sum by Ulster County standards. What will happen when the bank closes its doors? Will the depositors go along with switching their accounts to the two surviving Kingston-area Bank of America branches, one at the corner of Washington and Hurley avenues and the other on Ulster Avenue? How many of them will bank instead at the two other institutions in the Woodstock hamlet, Ulster Savings Bank and the Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union? Might some choose to patronize the West Hurley branch of Rondout Savings or nearby branches of other banks in Phoenicia or Saugerties?
The distant decision-makers at the Bank of America may be in for a surprise. Woodstock’s high proportion of depositors with second-home histories are not the usual banking customer.
Contrast BofA’s attitude toward branch-building with that of Rondout Savings, which decided to open a full-service branch in Hyde Park, its first foray outside Ulster County, in 2013. In terms of deposits, the Hyde Park outpost has started slowly. Now after four years at $14.5 million in deposits, the branch has less than one-seventh the deposits that the Bank of America is walking away from in Woodstock.
Bowers and Davenport aren’t about to throw the towel in on the bank’s first cross-river venture. Their numbers there have fairly closely tracked the pattern of slow deposit growth Rondout Savings experienced when it first pioneered with its West Hurley branch in 2005-2009. West Hurley is now at $34 million. Breaking a new trail in a new territory requires patience. Their Hyde Park team is very motivated to succeed, Bowers and Davenport said.
Historic photographs of American bankers almost always show males, often with bowler hats and mutton-chop sideburns. That’s in the past. Women have been increasingly entering the financial professions, and now they’re moving in larger numbers into higher management positions. That’s certainly true at Rondout Savings Bank, where Cheryl Bowers will take the top spot as the 14th president in the 150-year history of the bank in January. Bowers, a Kingston native who joined the bank in 2001, will be one of at least 13 women in management positions.
Bowers, Irishperson of the Year in 2016, has been chair of the local Chamber of Commerce and has served on several community boards, including those at SUNY Ulster, the Kingston Boys and Girls Club, the Kingston Lions and the Vassar Brothers Medical Center.
Chief lending officer Margie Rovereto and chief risk officer Ann Swenson are senior officers in the top management echelon. Among the other bank officers are director of operations Susan Dallies, new human resources director Christine Myers, senior credit officer Karen Burchell, controller Ryann Bruno and director of branch management Terri Ferris.
All five branch managers are women. Stephanie Earl, previously Stockade branch manager, is now manager of the headquarters branch at 300 Broadway in Kingston. Bettina Musumeci replaces her as the new Stockade branch manager. Heather Hart is manager of the Ulster Avenue branch. Clarissa Kowalski manages the West Hurley branch, and Rania Fakhoury is manager of the Hyde Park branch.
Of the seven members of the bank’s board of directors, only one, Heidi Kirschner of the YMCA, is a woman. All the other board members except board chairman Frank Ostrander, who works for Central Hudson, are longtime executives in their own local businesses.
Nora Castellano is the manager of Bank of America’s soon-to-close Woodstock branch.
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