PROVIDENCE – Citizens Bank N.A. is making a national name for itself through expanded clients and services, evidenced by its latest acquisition of a New York investment firm.
But according to Keith Kelly, the bank’s Rhode Island president, the company has not forgotten its Providence roots, nor customers, amid this growing national presence. Instead, Kelly says recent expansion deals mean more services and expertise for commercial and consumer clients, including in Rhode Island.
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“We really are becoming a national player,” Kelly said in an interview with Providence Business News on Thursday. “Wherever our clients are transacting, we serve them.”
Enhancing its services for mergers, acquisitions, succession planning and business advisory has been a focus of the bank and its parent company, Citizens Financial Group Inc., spurred by demand from middle-market clients, Kelly said. The Wednesday deal to acquire New York private banking firm DH Capital LLC is the third advisory services-related acquisition this year.
The cash deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, follows acquisitions of JMP Group LLC and Willamette Management Associates.
“We’re looking to position ourselves as experts in this space,” Kelly said of merger and acquisition and advisory services.
While M&A activity took off during the pandemic, Kelly anticipated the increase in deals will continue “through 2022 and beyond,” with business leaders continuing to take a hard look at how succession planning – or lack of – impacts their futures.
Also weighing heavy on Rhode Island commercial clients’ minds are the continued challenges of the pandemic, both health and economic. Labor and supply shortages are driving up costs rapidly, while new variants and rising cases are also cause for concern.
Still, the nature of a global economy is such that even Citizens’ Rhode Island middle market clients are not affected only by local health or economic benchmarks.
“They don’t make their living primarily within the four walls of Rhode Island,” Kelly said.
Kelly stressed the importance of a strategic approach by state lawmakers to helping Rhode Island recover and maximize its strongest assets. Specifically, the $1.1 billion in American Rescue Plan Act funding, most of which has not been allocated, is a “critical inflection point” for the state and its business community, Kelly said.
Job training, health care, housing and infrastructure were among the areas Kelly said he believed would give the state the biggest bang for its buck on its ARPA funds. Small and midsized businesses, the backbone of the state economy, should not be forgotten either, though Kelly emphasized that a thoughtful approach was needed rather than one of “throwing money at the wall.”
Despite the challenges, Kelly is cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, a sentiment he said is shared by many of the bank’s Rhode Island business clients.
“People and organizations have learned to work through the challenges of the last 18 to 24 months,” he said.
That’s true at Citizens, where in addition to major acquisition deals, the company has made digital offerings an increasing priority of its investments. Kelly could not share specific details on technology-related plans for 2022, but said that will continue to be a focus and an expectation among its clients.
Citizens has not instituted a mandate for nonconsumer-facing employees to return to the office, though it has been “encouraged,” Kelly said. He was unsure what impact the new state guidelines requiring offices to begin indoor masking or vaccination requirements would have on Citizens’ work policies, if any.
Kelly offered a similar “wait and see” response when asked about the impact of the Federal Reserve’s Wednesday projections for a series of interest rate hikes in 2022.
