Content area
Full Text
Signature Bank is all business.
A visit to its corporate headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City makes that point clear. To reach its primary branch, Signature customers have to walk by the Build-A-Bear Workshop at street level (the kind of retail space many banks would put a trophy branch in), use a side entrance on East 46th St. and then ride an elevator to the 12th floor.
Those hoops suit Joseph DePaolo, the cost-conscious president and chief executive, just fine since the $16 billion-asset bank caters to commercial and other nonretail clientele.
"When your branches are in office space, you save money," DePaolo says. "We do no advertising: no radio, no television and no print. We have a tendency to put the dollars into the compensation program where the teams are because they're the ones who are bringing in the money. That's key."
Pilfering dissatisfied commercial loan officers from other banks and paying them well to market Signature (SBNY) are the things that drive its growth. Its approach distinguishes the bank from competitors, who would have a hard time copying it, observers say.
"The model operates more like an asset management or brokerage firm where teams are incented to serve and retain clients," Peyton Green, an analyst at Sterne Agee, says. "It is really an entrepreneurial environment."
Certainly other community banks heavily emphasize wealth management and commercial lending, including City National (CYN) in Los Angeles and UMB Financial (UMBF) in Kansas City, Mo. With 17% loan growth at midyear, Signature has outpaced the 7% growth at...