Community Bank offers boutique approach to banking
by Glenn RittPut yourself in David Curtis’ shoes. He’s the CEO of The Community Bank, which owns a sliver of the Cape Cod market. He faces a growing cadre of competitors – from giants such as Bank of America to homegrown players like Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank and Cape Cod Cooperative Bank – whose Sandwich branches are located only blocks from his own headquarters on Cotuit Road.
No matter what he does, Curtis knows he won’t ever have the size and muscle to go head-to-head with any of them. But that’s OK. Keep in mind Curtis’ first name.
The Community Bank – with headquarters in Brockton – has emerged from a series of strategic sessions with a ‘small is powerful’ game plan. Curtis and his management team will try to avoid direct confrontations with bigger and more powerful competitors. Instead, they are creating a boutique approach to banking on Cape Cod.
The Community Bank’s strategy is threefold:
• Avoid spending lots of money constructing branches on the Cape. Instead, open up less expensive and intimate “business resource centers” that focus on the increasingly lucrative commercial customer.
• Hire key managers with strong backgrounds working directly with customers outside the traditional banking business.
• Take the bank to the customer – literally.
That’s exactly what Mardi Skoegard – who comes from Seattle, Wash., and the mortgage brokerage business – is doing on Main Street in Falmouth, where she manages The Community Bank’s first-ever business resource center, which officially opened in March.
There are no teller windows in what looks and feels more like an insurance urgency than a traditional bank branch. Customers can come by to conduct a full array of banking services, but the operation was designed especially for the increasingly coveted commercial customer, said Curtis. More to the point, he expects Skoegard and associates to spend as little time as possible in the office. However, unlike a traditional branch, there is no conventional teller station, and the office’s hours are essentially 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. That could put a damper on walk-up business beyond normal ATM usage.
“We’re going into these Business Resource Centers knowing we can’t be all things to all people,” said Curtis. “We’re even closed from noon to 1 p.m. so the administrative staff can go to lunch – but lunch at local restaurants, of course,” he noted with a smile.
“We established ourselves on Main Street so that we are within walking distance of hundreds of businesses here,” he said. “I want us to go to the client. They are so pressed for time; they don’t operate on a standard 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule. If we are to distinguish ourselves, we must provide utmost convenience. It’s a grassroots strategy that translates into old-fashioned house calls, or in this case, business calls.”
Added Skoegard: “I go out on sales calls and can’t believe how happy business owners are to have me come to them, even when I sometimes walk in just to say hello unannounced.”
Curtis appreciates that banking has become in many ways a commodity business, with every competitor – no matter the size – emphasizing customer service and relationships.
He is encouraged that despite their size, Bank of America and TDBanknorth have lost market share on the Cape to smaller, community-oriented competitors. He also has watched how Citizens Bank – despite its global scope and Scottish ownership – has risen to number two on the Cape behind Cape Cod Five. That growth is due largely to Citizens’ highly successful presence at Super Stop & Shops – where their bankers reach out to customers as they buy groceries.
Curtis picked the Falmouth location after a five- to seven-year search for the right location at the right time – a period when residential loan activity is slowing and competition for homebuyers is mounting from out-of-state and Internet-based mortgage companies. “It took us a long time to figure out what to create so we could respond to the growing needs of small businesses. We think it is relatively innovative.”
Meanwhile, the resource center costs only about one-third of a full-fledged bank branch. A larger operation in a new location would take about three to five years to break even, Curtis explained.
“That gets expensive. You have to lay out significant capital to build a new revenue stream. This way, we can follow the same discipline we counsel our business customers. Try to work with cash flow. If demand for our services in Falmouth grows as we hope, we can expand in the future, and we will have paid for the additional physical infrastructure with cash.”
This savings also will help The Community Bank afford additional business resource centers in the middle of Hyannis and Plymouth very shortly. Melissa Farrell, previously of TDBanknorth, will be managing the Hyannis location, and like The Community Bank’s practice from its Sandwich headquarters on the Cape, the other two locations will expand its courier service.
As another way to cull business customer loyalty, couriers set up daily schedules to pick up deposits and deliver documentation regarding bank business. The Hyannis expansion is made more necessary by the arrival of the Bank of Canton and newcomers Bank of Cape Cod and New England Savings Bank.
All of them, including The Community Bank, will be looking to the small business customer.
“We built our Falmouth location not only to be close to our customers, but to provide them with a resource to help grow their businesses,” said Curtis. Today, banks have to help commercial clients with human resources, accounting, growth strategies, marketing, succession planning and a host of other services. “In our planning, we came up with an array of concerns and priorities expressed by commercial customers, and the one common thread is ‘How do I grow my business?’
“We see people with great ideas, but they don’t fully appreciate the financial component. There’s an increasing need to coach, to connect them to resources,” he said.
Curtis acknowledged that the business resource center and house call strategy is “not rocket science.” But it exudes an entrepreneurial spirit he believes reflects the attitude of so many Cape businesses. “We know what it takes to run a small business, and that should attract other small businesses to us.”
He also appreciates that if his innovations prove successful, bigger competitors probably will adopt them – sooner rather than later. Competition demands that smaller players constantly innovate. “Inevitably, technology is going to make traditional branches obsolete anyway,” Curtis opined.
That’s why The Community Bank also has built a brand-new operation in Lakeville – but with only one teller station and an ATM. Instead, customers walk into a branch-sized operation with an open floor plan speckled with desks and are immediately greeted by a bank representative.
“Even if a customer only wants to deposit or cash a check, we want to connect with them and learn what more about we can do,” he explained. “Once someone opens up a bank account and relies on ATMs or a teller, it could be two or three years before we really have another chance to sit with them and potentially grow a relationship.”
Glenn Ritt Glenn Ritt is editor and co-publisher of Cape Business Publishing LLC. He is the former publisher of Cape Cod Community Newspapers and editor of The Bergen Record in New Jersey. 
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