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The ‘Very Nice Bank’ Gets a Very New Boss
New Haven Savings' Patterson charts course as ‘agent of change'
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Business New Haven
2/4/2002
By: BNH
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Last month Peyton Patterson of Greenwich assumed the reins of president, chairman and CEO of New Haven Savings Bank, filling the void left by the death of Charles L. Terrell a year ago. She previously was executive vice president of Dime Bancorp in New York, responsible for that company's consumer, investment and small-business segments. In her first New Haven interview, Patterson sat down with BNH on January 24.
Tell us a bit about your personal history.
I grew up with my mother in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.; she was with the State Department. Before we settled in Washington we moved around quite a bit - various areas of Europe, the States and whatnot. I went to college at Kenyon College [a Gambier, O. liberal arts school] then went back to Washington, worked for about a year then got an M.B.A. at George Washington University. That really started my banking career. I was given an opportunity to start in banking with Corestates Financial in Philadelphia, or with Hewlett-Packard in California - those were the two job offers I had. Twenty years later, I'm still in banking.
Describe your rise through the banking ranks.
I was with Corestates about seven years and held a variety of positions in lending, I was credit-trained, went through a variety of areas in retail banking, running branches, doing product management, marketing. In late 1989 I was recruited to Chemical Bank in New York, and like a lot of young people had a desire to live the 'New York experience.' I worked for Chemical until about six years ago when I went to Dime. I was a part of the integration between Chemical and Manufacturers Hanover, and then Chemical with Chase. During my time with Chemical and then Chase I was being groomed to run a number of businesses. I came in on the retail side, and then I got an opportunity to run a national business, consumer lending, on a full front-to-back basis. About three years later we merged with Chase and I was charged with running the national marketing and sales efforts for the deposit and lending areas.
How did you get to Dime Bancorp?
About six years ago the chairman of Dime was assembling a new management team, and a lot of people from Chemical/Chase asked me to join him as head of retail and business banking. The reason it was such a perfect opportunity was that it allowed me to take the best practices and experiences I had at a much larger commercial bank into a community environment, an area where I could be a real agent of change, leverage an [existing] foundation and take the company to new heights so that we could really compete head-on with the commercial banks and bigger players. I left Dime after six years following Washington Mutual's acquisition of Dime [on January 4].
Tell us about your courtship with the New Haven Savings search committee and board.
I was recruited through a search firm. I was approached about the position not long after the [summer 2001] announcement of the Washington Mutual acquisition. I was looking for an institution of this size wit a strong community presence to be my next step. The more that I spoke with the search firm and met with the [NHSB] board of directors, coupled with the research I did, I understood that this was a company with a phenomenal story to tell. It was a story that needed to be sharpened, needed to be leveraged and needed to become much more visible in the eyes of the community.
You spoke previously of 'shared values' between you and the NHSB board. What are some of those values?
I have several that I embrace that have carried me along my career and say a lot about how I run a company and my personal life. One would be commitment - to a vision, to fellow employees, to what has to get done. Integrity. Honesty. A relentless commitment to being focused on customers.
What did board members say they were looking for in a No. 1?
The board was looking for a leader who would bring thoughtful change to the company - leveraging a wonderful and very prideful reputation, a strong community commitment and taking a 16-percent market share and taking this company to the next level.
What is the 'next level'?
Building products and services that businesses and individuals want; building a strong value proposition; building our distribution channels; continuing to strive to make it easier and better to do business with us. If we have a model that's really great and an exceptional reputation for service, there are a lot of individuals and businesses in the Connecticut market that are dissatisfied with their current institution. They don't like the fact that they don't have [local] decision-making; they don't have people who understand the community. We need to leverage that so that [potential customers] really understand that. We also need to create a culture that would be very comfortable about asking people for business. What interested [the NHSB board] about my background is that those are the very things I was asked to do when I came to the Dime.
Your predecessor, Charlie Terrell, casts a pretty long shadow over not only this institution, but also this community.
Charlie Terrell was phenomenal in his commitment and the breadth of what he did to promote economic development, to promote the social welfare of various constituencies within the community. And what a wonderful starting point for someone like myself to come into to pick up the ball where he left off. I have a vested interest in the success of the community. I am a business executive in this town, and I want the town to do well, I want people to want to live here, I want businesses to thrive here - and I want to be the bank where they want to do their business. It's as simple as that.
Surely, though, it must feel at least a bit peculiar to step into those shoes?
It doesn't feel peculiar to me at all; I think it's a very good thing. Every leader forms a legacy for which he or she is remembered, and Charlie for many reasons will be remembered for that in addition to steering the bank to where it is now. I'm here to create the vision of Peyton Patterson and the board of directors, with the employees, to enter into a new chapter of the bank leveraging the work that's been done and taking the company where I believe [it needs to go]. I'm fortunate to have a wonderful starting point, but I'm talking about the future, being an agent of change and hopefully finding the sense of enthusiasm I've discovered over the last three weeks.
How about the personal challenge of becoming a prominent member of a rapidly shrinking club of local CEOs? You've already been asked to serve on the Yale-New Haven board; other volunteer invites are sure to follow. Is there enough of your time and energy to meet the demands, and where will you draw your personal boundaries?
I knew coming here that a very important part of my role would be not just operating this company but the role I would play in the community. There are many [opportunities] to join boards of charitable activities and whatnot, and I will be a front-runner in joining those. What I will do is to select with my colleagues on the board of directors and cross-section of interests in the community - like hospitals, like education, like housing, like economic development. I'm particularly interested in politics. But I will have to balance my commitments outside with running the bank and my personal life. That's no different from what I did when I was at Dime.
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