Rhode Island focus will raise WashTrust market share

FAMILIAR TERRITORY: Rhode Island native and Washington Trust President Edward O. “Ned” Handy III says the bank may consider adding a few more branches. / COURTESY WASHINGTON TRUST
FAMILIAR TERRITORY: Rhode Island native and Washington Trust President Edward O. “Ned” Handy III says the bank may consider adding a few more branches. / COURTESY WASHINGTON TRUST

Edward O. “Ned” Handy III has risen from the trenches of the region’s ever-shifting banking landscape to the executive suites of two locally prominent banks.
Handy is president and chief operating officer for Washington Trust, a position he took in November 2013 after his former role as Citizens Bank president for Rhode Island and Connecticut.
A Rhode Island native, Handy graduated from Brown University in 1984 with a degree in urban studies and worked for a couple of years as a carpenter and at a construction company, planning to learn the real estate business from the ground up. He entered the training program at Fleet Bank in 1986 with the goal of getting into real estate lending, which turned out to be an important part of his career – one of the positions he held was running the real estate lending division in Rhode Island for Citizens Bank.
In that Fleet Bank training program, Handy met Joseph Marc-Aurele, now chairman and CEO of Washington Trust.
In his position at Washington Trust, Handy oversees commercial lending, residential mortgages, retail branches, marketing and technology.

PBN: What’s been the most significant change in your perspective since you took the position of president and chief operating officer for Washington Trust?
HANDY: Many issues we face at Washington Trust are the same ones faced by other banks. It’s a slow-growth economy. We’ve got to find opportunities by digging deep and by fighting it out on the street corner. There’s a lot of competition. One of the perspectives interesting to me is working in a smaller bank. There are 570 employees at Washington Trust versus 19,000-plus at my last employer, so just the simplicity of decision-making, the ease of communication, the ease of strategic thinking in a smaller environment is refreshing to me.

PBN: How do you maintain customer loyalty in a constantly shifting banking landscape?
HANDY: Banking has been a shifting landscape in Rhode Island, in particular, for a long time – my whole career. It may be more pronounced of late. I think the way you maintain relationships with customers is by focusing on them. This is a people business. Shifts at the top, or even shifts at the loan officer or banker level, they happen. Oftentimes companies do become comfortable with a person and they do move. Oftentimes those companies have become customers of the institution and they’ve got diversified products, so they’re less likely to move. I think the answer is keeping the customer at the center and allowing people … to develop strong relationships with those customers.

PBN: Did issues with the Citizens’ parent bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, including the bailout by the British government, pressure to repay taxpayer money and the imminent IPO, have any impact on your decision to take the Washington Trust position?
HANDY: No. I worked at Citizens for 18 years. It’s a great company. I had a great opportunity to work for a Rhode Island-based bank. I love Rhode Island. I had an opportunity to work with a gentleman, Joe MarcAurele, who I’ve respected greatly over the years as a banker, as a mentor and as a friend. Citizens is going through a strategic shift and believe me, it’s been well-thought out. I don’t know the details, but there are a lot of very capable people there. As a Rhode Islander, I hope they’re successful and they stay right here. It’s a lot of jobs and very important to the Rhode Island economy.

PBN: What do you see as the main avenue for growth for Washington Trust? Are there expansion or acquisition plans in the works? HANDY: We certainly have capital to think about and do acquisitions, but the nice part is that we don’t have to. We have enough ancillary fee income from diversified revenue streams and organic growth momentum that we can certainly hit our growth objectives. On the organic side, where most of our growth is, we are growing in all businesses through market share. In Rhode Island we’ve got an 8 percent deposit share. Most of the deposit share is in two big competitors – Citizens and Bank of America, so we have an opportunity to gain market share through our Rhode Island banking focus. In addition, we’re thinking about growth external to Rhode Island. We have been busy on the commercial real estate front in Connecticut and Massachusetts. We will add to that some [commercial and industrial] growth – we haven’t been doing much lending to companies or manufacturers – that’s a new avenue of growth for us and one we’re working on. …We think we’re a strong competitor in the residential mortgage market, and we’re bullish on that market. We’ve seen very strong growth in the Greater Boston area in residential mortgages. On the retail side, we think there’s reason to keep in our strategy a few more branches.

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PBN: Joe Marc-Aurele has been, and continues to be, a very successful leader for Washington Trust. How you feel about the possibility of filling his shoes at some time in the future?
HANDY: Every big company thinks about succession planning. One has to earn a seat at that table. Joe has engaged a lot of very talented people in his management process and on his leadership team. His are big shoes to fill for anybody and my personal desire would be for that not to happen for a long time. I’m just very happy and flattered to be a part of the leadership team. •

INTERVIEW
Edward O. “Ned” Handy III
POSITION: President and chief operating officer for Washington Trust
BACKGROUND: Handy is a Rhode Island native. After a couple of years working in carpentry and construction after college in order to learn real estate from the ground up, Handy went into a training program at Fleet Bank with the goal of working in real estate lending. His banking career includes positions as head of Citizens Bank national commercial real estate finance division, president and CEO of Citizens subsidiary Charter One Bank of Ohio, and prior to joining Washington Trust in November 2013, he was Citizens Bank president for Rhode Island and Connecticut.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in urban studies from Brown University, 1984
FIRST JOB: Delivering newspapers at age 12
RESIDENCE: East Greenwich
AGE: 52

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