PBN Leaders & Achievers 2023
Leland Merrill
Centreville Bank
Executive vice president and chief lending officer
AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT has always been engrained within Leland Merrill.
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At first, Merrill had launched a pair of startups that proved successful for him, living the dream of wanting to run a business. The stresses associated with business ownership, however, soured Merrill’s passion.
“I worked 100 hours a week,” he said. “I loved managing the business and strategic planning and forecasting the business and marketing and all that … but I didn’t like the risk associated with it and the time consumption.”
By getting into banking, Merrill, now executive vice president and chief lending officer for Centreville Bank in West Warwick, kept doing what he liked, while cutting out what he didn’t like about working on his startups. Merrill now enjoys helping businesses plan their future and market their companies mostly stress-free, he said.
After selling his startups and getting his MBA from the University of Rhode Island, Merrill was recruited by Citizens Bank N.A. in 1998 but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do there.
“I had sat on the other side of the table as a business owner, and they said that would be a really great quality for a commercial lender,” he said.
Even in a managerial role, Merrill is still involved in business relationships. After Citizens, Merrill spent 18 years with BankNewport in various roles, including as chief lending and operating officer from 2018 through 2022. There, he led the federal Paycheck Protection Program project team of 40 staffers, helping distribute more than $134 million in loans to support businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Centreville Bank hadn’t done much commercial lending until recently, Merrill said. He came to Centreville in 2022 specifically because the bank wanted to lend and had a growth strategy. He brought his team along with him, and they have a lot of work ahead of them, he said.
“I love reading loan write-ups and talking to the lender about how the business is doing and what their plans are,” he said.
