Building a business doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it takes a village of advisors and support to succeed. One of the most important relationships you can develop is with a business banker.
Banking relationships for small businesses are not all created equally. Partnering with a community bank ensures you’re more than a number on a spreadsheet, and offers advantages that can help you achieve your business goals.
And the more the bank understands your unique business needs, the better. Charlie Gray, Vice President of Business Banking at Rockland Trust, specializes in helping small businesses and takes pride in offering personalized support for his customers. He walks through how to make the most out of business banking relationships with a community financial institution.
“Every business needs a bank account, and every business will need a loan at some point,” Charlie said. Searching for banking solutions online has never been easier and it can lead to analysis paralysis with so many choices.
Lending from a national or online-only institution may pair your business with a banker on the other side of the country. While they may have the right financial knowledge, they don’t have the context of the local economy and how your business fits in. The transactional relationship may get you the money your business needs today, but it isn’t necessarily concerned with where your business is going tomorrow.
Part of the community banking appeal is having a financial partner in close geographic proximity to your business, someone who can grab a coffee with you to discuss your plans or pop by a physical location. This allows business owners to develop relationships with their bankers, creating a more personalized banking experience. The result? Your banking partner really knows you and your overall vision for the business.
“If you do your best to build relationships with your customers, they’ll see better outcomes,” Charlie added.
In fact, this relationship-first method is one of Charlie’s favorite parts of working at Rockland Trust.
“Rockland’s philosophy when it comes to business lending is one of the reasons I love my job,” he explained. “We don’t just use a formula to determine our lending. It’s not an algorithm. We have insight into subjective matters through our relationships with our customers.”
Putting The Community First
For business owners who may not have the best financial history, partnering with a community bank can be a game changer. For example, a guarantor who doesn't have the best credit score may be working hard to rectify mistakes they made in their youth. When their business needs funding for growth, working with a bank that knows them personally and has confidence in their business plan can help them find a solution.
“Our philosophy on lending comes from the perspective of trying to help our customers, which is a big part of our culture,” Charlie said. “There are times when we consider loans for certain customers that other banks might not, because they don’t have the same background and perspective we do.”
Small businesses are a vital part of the community. Local banks consider how a loan may influence local macroeconomics. Funds for one business means more money on the street, which directly benefits the wider local economy.
“It's the right thing to do,” Charlie explains. “In the context of community banking, making sure money and capital flow into the community is important. A partner can support that.”
Rockland Trust’s Internal Culture Impacts Customer Outcomes
Charlie, who has worked at Rockland Trust for more than a decade, notes that relationships are central to the bank’s identity and internal culture.
“The way that we work with our customers is similar to the way we work with our own employees,” he said. “The bank wants us to manage our employees by encouraging them to do the right thing on behalf of the customer.”
Partnering with a customer not only means supporting a business every step of the way but also means establishing trust and an in-depth understanding of long and short-term goals.
Here for the Long Term
