Jeanne Hulit, Maine Community Bank (ME)

In this month’s episode, Vin and Zach are joined by Jeanne Hulit, President and CEO of Maine Community Bank. The depth and breadth of Jeanne’s resume provides the backdrop for a wide-ranging discussion that includes her: 

• Journey from international business to the regional and community banking arenas
• Time as the acting administrator with the Small Business Administration
• Current stewardship of a “merger of equals”
• Role as a Director with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Jeanne discusses the importance of saying “yes,” making effective decisions, and her passion for community banking as the ultimate economic development model.

For more insights and ideas, visit DCG at DarlingConsulting.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Transcript

[Vinny, 0:00]: 

On the balance sheet, Season 2, Episode 9, we have a great guest today. We have Jeanne Hulit, President and CEO of Maine Community Bank - she has an incredible resume. She's done so many different things and I think our listeners are really going to enjoy this. Right, Zach?

[Zach, 0:21]: 

Absolutely, and I've had the pleasure of working with Jeanne for the past five years or so and I think you hit the nail on the head with the background. We're going to delve into her banking background, her pre-banking days, how she got into it. We'll talk about her time at the SBA. She's the Director of the Federal Reserve Board as well. So, a pretty full slate here of questions, and she has a pretty impressive background in the great bank up there in Maine. So, very much looking forward to talking with Jeanne.

[Vinny, 0:49]: 

So, without further ado, Jeanne Hulit.

[Zach, 0:59]: 

Welcome back to "On the Balance Sheet," and Vin and I are very pleased to be joined today by Jeanne Hulit, President and Chief Executive Officer of Maine Community Bank. Jeanne, how are you doing this morning?

[Jeanne Hulit, 1:11]: 

I'm doing great, other than the rainy weather we're having in New England.

[Zach, 1:15]: 

Yeah, it's been a tough start to the summer. Hopefully, it'll get better here in July and August. Per usual, Jeanne, we usually start these interviews with folks like yourself, just giving our listeners some background. You have a pretty diverse resume, so could you tell us a bit about your early days getting into the banking industry and your experiences coming out of school, getting into banking, and then becoming the President and CEO of Maine Community Bank?

[Jeanne Hulit, 1:45]: 

Sure, I have a little bit of a, I'd like to say, got into banking backwards. I had a degree in International Studies with an emphasis on economic development from American University. I thought I was going to go into international business and promptly moved to Maine in 1983, where there wasn't a lot of international business at the time. That was a personal move, but my passion for economic development took me into starting my career working at Chambers of Commerce—the Portland Chamber. I worked at the US Chamber in DC before moving here, and then ended up at the Department of Economic and Community Development when they had just created their international division. So, I was able to use my background to help Maine companies that were getting involved in international trade, and did that for five years. We went through an early banking crisis in the early 90s, and a lot of the banks weren't lending. I happened to come across and have a friendship with the CEO of the President's Key Bank in Maine. He let me know they were creating an international division to provide trade services to customers in Maine. They could either teach one of their lenders something about international trade services or hire me and teach me to be a banker. So, that's how I ended up in banking. I started the international division of KeyBank in Maine and then, through regionalization, it got centralized in Albany. I was offered the opportunity to travel extensively throughout New England selling international trade services, but with two young children, I took a path that allowed me to move into commercial lending. So, I was very grateful for that. Without a credit background, they taught me to be a lender and I ended up as a commercial lender for the next 15 years of my banking career. So that's how I got into banking.

[Zach, 3:40]: 

That's a fascinating entryway. I didn't realize that, given your education at American and the international component of it, but you've looked at Key and Citizens, and I know you have some experience in the Northeast with some pretty good-sized community banks in that - or maybe regional banks on the Citizens side. But what I'm curious about, Jeanne, is how did you get involved in the late 2000s with the SBA? How did that all come about in terms of your service there and just the experience?

[Jeanne Hulit, 4:11]: Sure. That came about frankly because, you know, I've been pretty active in local politics. I'd actually run for state Senate in Maine because I was, I was kind of underutilized in my banking career at that time. Citizens had a loan production office here in Portland. I had a great portfolio, was hitting all my numbers, but I was really not challenged. So, we had an interesting political environment and I decided to run, and I lost by about 302 votes. But in that process, the credit crisis happened. So that was 2008, and when the new administration started to put together the team to run the SBA, the New England Regional Administrator position was a political appointee. Somebody said, "Well, I happen to know a banker who's politically active," and I was introduced to the White House Office of Personnel who recruited me to be the New England Regional Administrator. At the time, the SBA was playing a critical role, as it recently had during the pandemic. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had just passed, and SBA guarantees were 90%, and loan sizes were increased to 5 million, and it was an effort to support small businesses during the credit crisis when a lot of the larger banks were withdrawing from small business funding. So, I was an extension of my passion for economic development. I thought this is a great time to do something with my banking background that also served my passion for economic development. I left banking and was the New England Regional Administrator for two years, and then I ended up running the office for Capital Access which oversees the loan program, because the gentleman who was running that department had to leave on very short notice for personal reasons, and the administrator asked on a Friday if I would come down on a detail to run the office for a couple of months, since I had a banking background, and I said sure. I came down and ended up being 2 1/2 years, and I stayed on through the second term. We worked hard at trying to simplify the program and reorganize the department because it had been pretty demoralized over time before us - it was a great management challenge and opportunity. At the end of that experience, the administrator, Karen Mills, decided to leave and go back into academia. She went back to Harvard, and the White House asked me to serve as the Acting Administrator for six months while they recruited a permanent administrator. I had made it clear I wanted to return to Maine - I'm not from DC originally. I moved to Maine in '83 for a reason. I love Maine and I didn't really want to be in DC. So, I had gone down on the detail and ended up spending quite a bit of time and was ready to go back to Maine and had the opportunity at Northeast, had an amazing experience serving on the cabinet for six months, and came back to Maine as the Community Bank President for Northeast Bank.

[Zach, 7:14]: 

It's really an interesting story, Jeanne, and I think all these things - I gather - must have been pretty influential in your taking over the leadership of Maine Community Bank. At that point, it was Biddeford Savings Bank and Mechanics Savings Bank that had just joined up. Could you maybe talk a bit too about how a lot of those stops along the way at Key and Citizens, and even before that, plus with the SBA and Northeast experience, how that shaped you walking into your current role as the President and CEO of Maine Community Bank? Maybe give the listeners a little background too, you know, how that was a merger of equals, and you had a mutual holding company, and then you collapsed into one charter back in 2020. Anywhere you want to go on that front, we'd love to hear about it.

[Jeanne Hulit, 8:00]: Well, I think the starting point would be my experience both in the large regional banks and then at the SBA, which convinced me that I really wanted to be a leader in Community banking. Community banking is the ultimate economic development job. It's so transformational to a community's economy. So, when I came back from the SBA and worked at Northeast, I learned a lot at Northeast. I learned how to sit at the table and ALCO and had some real management responsibilities that went beyond my prior experience in banking. But it wasn't really the Community bank feel that I was looking for. So, I left and worked for a client for a year and a half while he was positioning his company for sale and then got recruited for this position. I took this position largely because of the challenge. The two former banks were both under 500 million in assets. They had come together to form a mutual holding company, but frankly, short of forming a mutual holding company and a few other key things, they had not fully integrated. It was really two banks running completely differently, with two separate boards, processes, procedures, policies, and core versions of the core operating system. Nothing had really been integrated to the degree that the benefit of a mutual holding company, which was to consolidate the non-revenue services into a holding company, was designed to do. The boards had decided to hire one CEO - there were two CEOs due to the two banks - to hire one CEO to manage both banks and the holding company and rationalize this process. I thought it was going to be a fabulous management challenge, and having worked at the SBA during a challenging time in the economy and a transition of administrations, I had really grown as a manager, understanding how to pull people together to rationalize organizational structures and employ resources efficiently. So, I took that background and applied it here. After getting here, it was pretty clear that the management team and staff were exhausted running two banks and a holding company in two different ways. There were 24 board meetings for the two banks - 24 board meetings once a month. We had four holding company meetings. So, the senior management team would go into 28 board meetings a year, seeing things differently in both banks. They were tired, and it just made sense to merge the banks under one charter. The board was supportive of that, and we got that done. Then COVID happened, so the board didn't want to lose their brand identity of the two original banks. So, we ran the banks as divisions of Maine Community Bank, legal entities. We had Biddeford Savings and Mechanics Savings as divisions of Maine Community Bank. That helped us during the pandemic because, let’s face it, our communities were experiencing a lot of change and stress. Changing the bank name at the time would have caused additional confusion. We got through the pandemic very well, and when it was all over, everyone agreed it was time to be one bank. So, this week, we are actually finishing the rebrand of the bank to one name, Maine Community Bank, on all our branches. We are moving forward as a billion-dollar bank under one name, one board, and one CEO. It was a long journey, but we got here, and I think we ended up in a better place. We're a billion-plus bank with strong tier one capital and plenty of liquidity. So, I think our opportunity right now, with this kind of balance sheet, is to really double down on our presence in the market. We are in the three counties that I feel are the most economically vital to the state of Maine in terms of demographics and income. So, to be a strong community bank and to meet our customers' needs today is a real opportunity.

[Vinny, 12:10]: 

Jeanne, this is Vinny. Thanks again so much for joining us. Listening to that story through the merger, I'm reminded of an M&A attorney who said that there's no such thing as a merger of equals. I know earlier on, I got some exposure to this early in my career, maybe 15-18 years ago, where I walked into a boardroom of a couple of banks that had just merged. You had about 15 people sitting on one side of the table and 15 on the other side. I'm like, "Did they not know they're on the same team now?" - It was really interesting. What do you think the key was to creating your own unique culture at that bank? Zach and I were chatting; I said Maine Community Bank is an awesome name. I feel like it would engender loyalty from Mainers who would be proud to put their deposits in a bank called Maine Community Bank. So, what were the key things and some of your strategies to kind of build a singular culture through this process?

[Jeanne Hulit, 13:02]: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for that recognition of how we feel about our name as well. I like to say our name says it all. We are a community bank dedicated to Maine, and we're not trying to be anything else. So, I think it kind of started with that, started with the name. Our two communities are largely the central Maine community that Mechanics Savings was in, and the southern community of Biddeford where Biddeford Savings was at. We're only 25 minutes away from each other on the highway, so we really are... people talk about culture. I needed to remind the staff that we are the same culture. We are Mainers. We are Maine Community Bank. We come from the same communities, we're only up the road, and many of the same families, because both Lewis and Auburn and Biddeford and Saco, a lot of the same heritage and family names are the same. So, it was reminding the staff that we are the same. We may have operated different banks, but we are the same people and culture. But culture also starts from the top, and the leader has to communicate what the culture of the bank is and what the values are. Working with the senior management team, reinforcing that on an ongoing basis. So, it's really about communication. And I think one of the challenges, you know, part of my coming here, we had two CEOs who had very different communication styles. The message may have been the same, but it got communicated differently, and people hear things differently. So, you didn't have that cohesion. Having one leader focused on communication, reinforcing the message, is really how you build culture. And the other part of it is making decisions. With a merger, there are a lot of little decisions that have to be made. When you've got folks from two different organizations coming together to make a joint decision about the product we're going to have, the service we're going to offer, the policy we're going to have, and you have two different sets of experiences, somebody has to make the call and say, "We're going to do it this way, and get on board." I think there was a lot of identifying... I would say analysis paralysis, a lot of analyzing how things were done at the two different organizations, but not a lot of empowerment to execute and say, "We're going to do it this way." And I think that's what you need was one leader who can come in and empower people, explain why, and everybody can get on board. That's how you change or build a culture.

[Vinny, 15:44]: 

It's great advice for those who are listening and contemplating this type of transaction. I want to ask you a question. I was able to listen in on a radio spot you did, you know, in the wake of the more recent, can't say large bank failures, but the Silicon Valley deal and so forth. Your question, 'Are you worried as a leader of a community bank that some of your bank deposits would flee and go to the banks that were too big to fail?' And the way you kind of answered it, you said, 'Look, let's not forget that too big to fail was originally created in a disparaging way because those banks were going to fail, and they were too big.' I could just sense the irony on that. And you said, 'Personally, I don't believe we're going to lose deposits to those larger banks.' So, we've seen clearly in the industry deposits move out, but not necessarily to larger banks. They're moving out to money market mutual funds. They're moving maybe into treasuries. We're not hearing or seeing evidence that they're going to the big banks. 

[Jeanne Hulit, 16:36]: 

I would completely agree with that. I mean, one of the things that COVID taught our customers is how to go online. Maine is the oldest demographic in the Union, so we have a lot of older customers who like to come into branches and get their paper statements and talk to their branch manager. Well, when you couldn't do all of that, a whole bunch of people learned to go online and do their banking online, just the next step, to go online and open up that account at a bank that has a higher interest rate or a money market or a Raymond James account or whatever. So, the outflow of deposits has, in my opinion, been towards the return, the efficiency, the ease of doing business. And I think that's the biggest challenge for Community banks. Our strength is our connected fiber to our communities, our physical presence, our ability to have conversations, to handhold people through some of the stressful decisions about managing their money and their assets. So, we have to have that infrastructure, but we also have to be able to invest in the technology for the generation that doesn't ever walk into a bank. And we've been talking about that for a long time, but it is here in spades now. It's not just Gen Z that isn't walking into a bank. Its Gen Z's parents that aren't walking into a bank. It's their grandparents that aren't walking into a bank because they've learned to use the technology. So, we have to make the ease of doing business with the Community bank as frictionless as the ease of some of these online services that have a lot more money to invest and pay higher returns. So that's the biggest challenge in my opinion about retaining deposits. 

[Vinny, 18:19]: 

Well, thank you. That's a great way to kind of think through it. And I had one other thing I wanted to ask you. You kind of look around the state of Maine, and this is probably fair for the rest of the country as well. I look at the two dozen largest banks in your state or so, and only two of them are run by women. And as a father to a young daughter, I'm curious. I know this is probably very important to you because I've done my research, and what are the types of things that you think are important as you become a mentor in the industry for younger folks, as they make their career in banking? 

[Jeanne Hulit, 18:50]: 

Well, I first want to say right now it's only one run by women, and that's me. The other one retired last year. In the whole history of the state of Maine, there's only been four female CEOs. So, it is a challenge and an opportunity. I think the most important thing is it's not just who's at the top, but who is in the C-Suite? Who's in the management ranks? Who's making the decisions? Whose voices are being heard? And from the time I began my career in banking, there were so few women in any leadership role. There were a lot of programs about how to mentor women to get ahead, but there was a little bit more corporate lip service than it was real action. I think generationally, things have really changed. Women have been in the workforce so much longer now and have had careers and chances that they've earned their seat at the table, they're at the table. And so, you're going to see that next generation in leadership roles, and knowing that women serve as CEOs will continue to say, well, there's no reason I can't do that. And my senior management team, including myself, I have seven members of senior management, four are women. My CFO, my Chief Operating Officer, my head of retail, and myself. And that's not because we had some corporate initiatives to advance women. That's just because we've got really talented women in the industry. And the way women advance is seeing other women who can support and model the willingness to put themselves forward. You commented at the beginning of the interview about how I've had a lot of different experiences and sort of an interesting ride, and that's largely because I have the confidence and family support to say, 'Yeah, I'll do that.' So, you know, when I got asked to go to DC on a Friday and had to show up on Monday for a meeting and then ended up being there for 2 1/2 years, because I said, 'Yeah.' It's because I said, 'Yeah, I can do that.' And that's my message to whether it's any young woman or young man advancing their careers. You're never going to get it perfect. You're never going to be completely prepared for an opportunity that's presented. But if you say, 'Yeah, I'll figure it out,' and have confidence in yourself and resources, the support system to enable you to do that, you know you can become a CEO one day. So, I think the glass ceiling has remnants, but it's not being supported the way it was. I think that there are a lot of young women who just grew up knowing they're as confident as the young man sitting next to them, and they didn't have to think about it. 

[Zach Zoia, 21:44]: 

Jeanne, I think that's a tremendous answer and terrific advice. I think it's a good segue to the last couple of questions we have for you. Speaking about leadership and having a seat at the table, you have a seat at a table called the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's board of directors. You're in year three now of your term there, and I'm just curious about the experience of how you got involved there and what it's been like the last couple of years working or being a part of that organization, especially as it's gone from the leadership of Eric Rosengren to now Susan Collins. 

[Jeanne Hulit, 22:18]: 

Well, again, getting back to my last point about speaking up, the reason I got on the Fed board was during the pandemic and the early months of the pandemic. The Fed had several conference calls with bank leaders about rolling out the PPP program and the BLF funding program, and there was a lot of misinformation in the media, as you recall, at the time, a lot of confusion about the program. It was kind of a free-for-all conversation, and I remember speaking up about that because there were people pointing fingers at the SBA or at Treasury or whatever. And I spoke up about our experience with the PPP program and also provided some clarity about the role of the SBA with the 7(a) program, which was the platform they hung PPP on. About a month later, I got a phone call from this gentleman, and I thought, you know, 'Oh my God, my regulator's calling me. What did I do?' He called and basically said, 'I heard your comments on this conference call, and you were right on.' So, I did some research, and we need to fill a seat for the Class A director of a small bank, and we'd like to ask if you'd be interested.' So that's how that came about, which again, wouldn't have come about if I hadn't spoken up and had confidence in what I was saying. So that's how it came about, and the experience has just been incredible. To work with...I think Eric Rosengren was a tremendous intellect and a wonderful leader of the Boston Fed through some very difficult times. I wish him the best. I know he left with some health challenges. And Susan Collins is a different type of leader. She's a bit more new to New England, but she is so smart. Her passion, frankly, is things that I love about her. Her academic credentials are back in economic development of lesser-developed economies, which was what I was passionate about in college. I'm fascinated by her background and her leadership style. The meetings, for folks that don't know, have three members of the community on the board: three bankers (small, medium, large,) and three business people. So, it's for different-sized businesses. It's just a really great opportunity to bring knowledge to the table, to share with the staff at the Boston Fed and with Susan about what we're seeing, experiencing, and impacting in our local economies, and what they should be aware of. 

[Vinny, 24:57]: 

Jeanne, thanks so much for that overview. I'm curious, Susan Collins is, I believe, Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, Brookings, Michigan. A lot of academia. Whereas you, when we look at you, you sort of obviously have a great academic background as well, but more practical experience. So, I'm curious for the listeners, there's economic theory, and I think that plays a big part today as interest rates have gone up 500 basis points since last March. You know, what is it like for Susan Collins and the rest of the board's reaction to, you know, what higher interest rates are doing to the Community banking system, as clearly we're seeing margins come under pressure? 

[Jeanne Hulit, 25:39]: 

I don't want to speak for Susan, but I will say that they are...well, Susan's background is very academic, and there are a lot of credible academics in the Fed. The amount of brainpower of economists in one room is staggering to me. There's a ton of data, a ton of research, and they have a very strong outreach program and communication to the banks. So, I'm just one voice on the board, and I would say it's a very engaged conversation when we talk about the impact of the industry environment. Their heads are not in the clouds. They have a very real understanding of the consequences of the interest rate hikes, but they have a mandate that they are very clear about, which is controlling inflation without destroying the economy, and the balancing act. I can say that they're very thoughtful, they listen well, and they have access to more data than anybody. 

[Vinny, 26:51]: 

That's correct. And it's a really tough job right now. There are just so many different factors, variables. We're coming out of that COVID environment, there's a lot of liquidity in the system, and my gosh, I'm glad we have some really smart people kind of at the head of the table there. 

[Jeanne Hulit, 27:09]: 

Yeah, the bank promoting program, that template I think was a good tool. 

[Vinny, 27:14]: 

Absolutely, a great tool. I was looking at the Fed's balance sheet the other day. There are quite a few folks, you know, a lot of institutions taking full advantage of that, right now. 

[Zach, 27:24}: 

Jeanne, that's all we have here today, and it's actually been really insightful. We appreciate your insights on the Fed. We had another client on a few months ago, Episode Five of the season, and she's a Class A director of the St. Louis Fed. So, to hear kind of some of her perspectives and working with James Bullard, to kind of hear how your experiences were with two different presidents, I think the listeners will really appreciate that. Plus, all your other answers were tremendous too. We really appreciate your time today, and thanks so much for joining us. 

[Jeanne Hulit, 27:52]: 

It's my pleasure. Anytime. 

[Vinny, 27:57]: 

Well, welcome back to On the Balance Sheet. I thought there was an awesome interview, Zach. I really enjoyed listening to Jeanne. Quite frankly, I wish we had another 30-40 minutes because there's stuff we didn't even scratch the surface on. She's got a really interesting background, and her experience, I think there's a couple of things that stood out. One is she's not afraid of a challenge, that's for sure. She's been in different organizations at times that there were some clear difficulties those organizations were faced with. But I thought the thing that really stuck out to me, and quite frankly, the reason I love working in Community banking, is sort of the same ideal, which is economic development. I think Gene had mentioned she thinks Community banking is the ultimate economic development job that's out there, and you see it firsthand. That's where I draw the most satisfaction from my job, watching banks that we have an opportunity to work with be successful and provide growth to their local communities. I think what's lost on a lot of folks that don't understand banking is how critical these institutions are to the economic engine of our country. 

[Zach, 29:04]: 

Yeah, then absolutely. I really couldn't have said that better myself. And I think on the kind of a similar plane here, my takeaway was really the part about just saying yes to opportunities. And she's definitely not afraid of a challenge. Or I'd say attacking challenges, right? You think about her early banking career and the leap she took there from her schooling. It's her first couple of jobs, and then you talk about running for States and losing. But then she goes to work at the SBA, right? That probably opened up a door for her there that she moved down to DC ultimately for. And then you kind of think about, well, how did she get on the Federal Reserve Board, Bank of Boston? Well, she spoke up. She kind of said yes to an opportunity, and she spoke up. And you've got to think too, that I mean, Maine Community Bank, for those who aren't aware, was very active in the PPP lending area with no surprise probably given Jeanne's background, and she had a very open window or insight into what was going on there. So, I think she's on the board, partly in her own words, because she was willing to say yes and speak up. And I think that really resonates, whether you're just starting your career, mid-career, or later in your career. Those are really important things, and she definitely takes that to heart. And my work with her and her bank has done a great job there, but clearly, in her whole career, she's been willing to take on challenges, and I think that's led to a very successful and, as we've said this whole time, fascinating and really interesting career path. 

[Vinny, 30:29]: 

Yeah, well said, Zach. And that's a wrap for Episode Nine of Season Two. We thank you for listening and stay tuned for future episodes of On the Balance Sheet. 

[Outro, 30:42]: 

On the Balance Sheet is a podcast produced by Darling Consulting Group, DCG. All views and opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own and may not represent those of DCG. All third parties are independent entities and are not affiliated with DCG. This podcast is intended for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as advice. All views and opinions expressed are based on the information available at the time, it may change based on current market and other conditions. For more information about DCG; please visit www.darlingconsulting.com or email us at info@darlingconsulting.com. Today’s music is provided by Coma-Media Light Saturation and can be found on pixabay.
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