Shop Talk: Q&A With Paul Scully, Country Bank For Savings
Photo/Christina H. Davis
Paul Scully, President and CEO, Country Bank for Savings
Paul Scully got his start in banking 34 years ago as a teller in Arlington. He steadily made his way up the career ladder until he secured the top spot at Country Bank for Savings of Ware in 2004. Country Bank, despite its folksy small-town name, is a force to be reckoned with in the region with more than $1.4 billion in assets and 15 branches. Here he talks about why Country Bank isn’t interested in opening a branch in Worcester and what he’s hearing from business customers about economic conditions.
>>What are you hearing from people about the economy right now? And is that in line with your financial results?
We have seen significant deposit growth here at Country Bank for Savings. Our deposits in the first five months of the year grew by $85 million, which is very, very significant. So you do see that people have sort of hunkered down and are focused on saving and maintaining their principle.
>>What are you hearing from your business customers?
In 2009 it was very quiet. Businesses were reluctant to expand or grow because they really didn’t know what was going to happen next. Some folks are beginning to get a little bit more optimistic, whereas 2008 and 2009 were clearly years of waiting to see what was going to happen. Now, many business owners are at a point where they’ve stabilized their businesses by making the changes in staffing and operating costs that they needed to survive. In the last month — and I can’t tell you why — we’ve seen a stronger demand for commercial loans than we have seen in the first five months of the year.
>>You don’t have a branch in Worcester. Do you have any plans to move into the city?
Really our focus has always been on the more rural country-type communities, hence the name. We do a significant amount of the commercial lending in the major cities, in Worcester and in Springfield, but we don’t feel the need to have a location in the city. Our real emphasis and focus has been on the suburban communities.
>>How do you grapple with the intense pressure to keep pace with online banking?
For us, we’re fortunate in that we are of a significant size — $1.4 billion in assets. We have the internal resources and profits to put into product development. Certainly there are the large super regionals that are usually out of the gate first with their product offerings. But in our case, we look at emerging trends and also look at whether a new technology is really going to work well for our customer base.
>>Country Bank is a fairly large bank, but you seem to be under the radar. Is that intentional?
I don’t want to say it’s deliberate, but we have remained very focused on the fact that we are a community bank. As you go to each one of our towns, our sign says Country Bank of Brookfield, or Country Bank of Leicester. As you walk in to each of our locations, the staff knows the customers. But when you look at the totality you realize, yeah we are a big bank with over a billion dollars in resources. I think that the piece that is so critical to any bank as it grows is to keep that local identity and that local connection.
>>How does Country Bank deal with competition? Have you seen an increase since you first came here?
I wouldn’t say it’s really changed all that much. I think what has happened though, is if you go back seven to 10 years ago, there was a heightened belief that electronic banking was going to take over the industry and that people would not need to come to branches. But the fact of the matter is that people really like that when they go down Route 20, they can say my bank is there.
>>What’s the toughest lesson you’ve had to learn as a manager?
I don’t really see it as the toughest lesson. What I see it as is the biggest opportunity as a manager. The biggest opportunity for me is to allow other people to develop. The organization is a collection of 250 people. I happen to be the one person with my title, but that doesn’t mean that any of the other roles within the organization are any less significant to the organization because clearly we need them. So, I think the biggest opportunity is to allow other people to develop their skills to lead in their own way.
Watch as Paul Scully discusses what he enjoys most about his job:
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