Signature Bank: “We don’t even have a line item in our budget for advertising.”

Very nice article on Signature Bank ($SBNY):

With just 0.1 percent of Signature’s loan portfolio listed as “nonperforming,” meaning that the debtor has not made scheduled payments on the loan for 90 or more days, it would be easy to assume there was some secret formula to how the bank finds solid borrowers. But DePaolo chalks the bank’s loan portfolio success up to its niche in the market, targeting privately held businesses valued between $20 million and $100 million.

“For the most part, either we know the client or prospect, or they were referred by an existing client that’s well-known to us,” DePaolo said.

The chief executive said that Signature, nestled in the largest financial market in the country, is well-positioned to siphon off business in that privately held business market from the big banks, a pull that those banks likely have noticed.

“We have a lot of opportunity to take business away from them,” DePaolo said. “I’m not sure that they want to admit it to anyone, but they’re worried about us.”

(…)

With $26 billion in assets and a market capitalization of approximately $6.09 billion, Signature Bank has branches in New Rochelle and White Plains, another branch soon to open in Greenwich, Conn., and about 30 total locations in the New York metropolitan area.

But those locations, DePaolo said, aren’t as visible as those of the big banks, by design. They are often on the upper floors of office buildings, near the action, but somewhat hidden in plain sight.

Each morning, when DePaolo gets off that 5:45 a.m. Metro-North train from New Rochelle, he walks by the brightly lit big bank signs to lead a bank that takes a different approach.

“That’s just not us,” DePaolo said of the flashy advertising. “We don’t even have a line item in our budget for advertising.”

Posted by on January 23rd, 2015 at 3:44 pm


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