PBN Business Excellence Awards 2020
Excellence at a Large Company: BankNewport
ONE OF BANKNEWPORT’S priorities is developing a best-in-class customer experience by focusing on the whole customer journey.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
If its growing footprint is any indication, the 201-year-old bank is succeeding in that endeavor.
The Newport-based bank, with assets at $2 billion, has stretched northward to include sites in Providence, Cumberland and, beginning last year, Johnston among its 18 branches, two loan-production centers and five insurance offices. Having acquired marine and recreational lending companies in the past few years, BankNewport has extended its reach along the Eastern Seaboard to Florida.
This has all raised brand awareness, and helps bring new consumer and business customers to both BankNewport and its insurance agency, OceanPoint Insurance.
“We believe in the personal banking experience,” CEO and President Sandra J. Pattie said. “All of our funding decisions are made right here in Rhode Island, so customers will experience expedient borrowing opportunities and personalized service that directly reflects our mission and role as a true community bank.”
Founded in 1819, BankNewport is one of the oldest community banks in the U.S. As a mutual organization, it has no stockholders. That allows the bank to focus on long-term strategy and profitability instead of quarterly returns to stockholders, as stock banks do.
Like other mutual banks, BankNewport can help customers, employees and communities achieve financial success by reinvesting earnings to serve customers and communities.
That translated into more than $4.5 million BankNewport has awarded in grants, sponsorships and donations over the past nine years. Employees volunteer hundreds of hours of their time each year in the community.
For example, in early March, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 35 BankNewport and OceanPoint Insurance employees joined United Way of Rhode Island for two hours to help pack 12,000 meals for local food pantries.
As the pandemic grew, the bank continued to help nonprofit partners meet the growing demand to serve those most in need.
The bank’s Community Fund Committee redirected $250,000 in grants to the Rhode Island Foundation’s and United Way’s joint COVID-19 Response Fund and $100,000 in grants to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. BankNewport also divided $79,000 among several nonprofits with scheduled fundraisers to help them.
BankNewport’s lending team worked around the clock to also award $131 million in loan requests to about 2,000 small businesses applying for money through the U.S. Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program and through the R.I. Commerce Corp.’s Emergency Bridge Loan Program.
Spearheaded by R.I. Commerce and the Rhode Island Hospitality Association, the short-term program was funded with $1 million each from BankNewport and R.I. Commerce Small Business Loan Fund and administered through the Local Initiatives Support Corp. to help restaurants and microbusinesses, enterprises with no more than 10 employees.
The bank also waived fees as part of its customer-assistance program. BankNewport also converted day-to-day visits to its existing by-appointment banking- only online service.
Digital-banking customers had a variety of online and mobile-banking tools available to them to help reduce the number of people who had to come to the bank – an essential business – for various transactions.
“BankNewport is a true community bank,” said Wendy E. Kagan, executive vice president and director of employee and community engagement.
Cementing it all together is a highly trained team of bankers and commercial lending officers who are well-versed in what they do and committed and empowered to guide and help clients achieve their financial goals. This became more difficult in the COVID-19 work-from-home environment.
But the bank’s executives quickly added to their weekly executive meetings, monthly senior-management meetings and routine all-officer meetings, a weekly email updating all team members. The responsibility to send the email rotates among the executives to ensure employees hear the latest about all aspects of the business.
Executives also held a series of four organization-wide virtual town-hall-type meetings, encouraging employees to ask questions remotely so answers could be shared with everyone. Almost two-thirds of bank and insurance employees participated in at least one session.
“We believe that team members who understand the goals of the organization better understand their role in our success, so transparency with our team is paramount, and we work diligently to keep them informed,” Kagan said.
