KeyBank’s new market leader has higher aspirations for CT

HBJ Photo | Matt Pilon James Barger, KeyBank’s recently named Connecticut-Massachusetts market president, said he sees room for growth in the Nutmeg State, despite its economic challenges.

Write a Comment

By Matt Pilon

Since it entered the Connecticut market three years ago through its $4.1 billion acquisition of First Niagara Bank, Ohio-based KeyBank’s deposits market share in the state has been relatively flat.

James Barger wants to change that.

The 55-year-old senior vice president is KeyBank’s recently named Connecticut-Massachusetts market president, as well as commercial sales leader.

In a recent interview at KeyBank’s 100 Pearl St., private banking suite in downtown Hartford, where he divides his time with his other new offices in New Haven and Boston, Barger said he intends to hire more commercial bankers to his six-person commercial-lending team here.

“I’ve spent a lot of time since I started working in Connecticut and Massachusetts recruiting,” he said. “We’re going to add two to three bankers here in Connecticut before the end of the year.”

KeyBank wasn’t willing to disclose its commercial banking market share in Connecticut, but Barger characterized it as “modest” and he wants to grow it.

“Obviously, Connecticut is not the fastest growing part of the U.S. economy, but we don’t have a big market share here, so it’s a good opportunity for us to compete and grow,” he said.

Growing up in Boston and spending much of the last 25 years of his banking career in New York — 15 of them with KeyBank — Barger is a Connecticut newcomer. He and his wife are still in the process of moving to New Haven from Rochester.

His bullishness on growing KeyBank’s Connecticut business stems from the fact that many of the lender’s commercial-banking clients here are doing pretty well.

Like any sales leader in a competitive banking market, one of Barger’s tasks will be trying to convince his competitors’ clients that they’d be better off in KeyBank’s portfolio.

”There is a lot of room to grow, so that’s why we’re hiring the people and going after it,” he said.

KeyBank’s Connecticut deposits totaled $4.53 billion as of June 30, which gives it a 3.24 percent in-state market share, according to federal data. That’s up from the $4.1 billion First Niagara had in 2016, just before the acquisition closed, but nearly an identical 3.21 percent market share.

Standing out in the crowd

So, how will Barger win over new customers and expand existing business relationships?

While consolidation continues to reshape Connecticut’s banking lanscape, Barger downplayed any opportunities that might create.

He said, for example, he doesn’t anticipate a huge market-share windfall from People’s United Bank buying United Bank.

Instead, Barger is focused on a strategy he used when he led KeyBank’s Rochester market, and its Syracuse commercial team for nine years before that.

It involves collaborating across all of KeyBank’s key units, including commercial banking, investment banking, real estate and capital markets.

“In general, we’re going to have more resources, more people, but we’re also going to go after a higher end of the market than I think KeyBank was primarily focused on previously in Connecticut.

“A lot of the smaller banks we compete with do not have investment bankers or capital-markets capabilities, and a lot of the larger banks have more extensive investment banking and capital-markets capabilities than we have, but those resources are not necessarily focused on the middle-market companies that KeyBank focuses on. We’re also doing it by having sophisticated treasury-management products like accounts payable and receivable and invoice automation capabilities that are second to none.”

KeyBank acquired those services through a series of investments in fintech companies.

He also plans to better coordinate all of the bank’s various divisions. That means commercial bankers referring their clients to the retail side, where an advisor will visit the workplace and pitch employees on KeyBank’s financial wellbeing offerings in the hopes of landing new depositors.

A lot of it simply comes down to execution, he said.

“It doesn’t sound very sexy,” Barger said. “But we have the collaborative culture and the capabilities to bring that to bear.”

Market facing

Barger is the face of the market for KeyBank, including with the nonprofit and philanthropic communities.

Along with his visits to approximately half of KeyBank’s nearly 60 Connecticut branches thus far, Barger has also visited with officials from the Yard Goats, Travelers, Yale, UConn, and other companies and institutions across much of the state.

Banking and marketing partnerships are a common strategy among banks, as they help with branding and can create goodwill.

“The brand is pretty strong,” Barger said. “People know who KeyBank is for the most part here in Connecticut.”

The bank declined to disclose what it spends on sponsorships in Connecticut, but said it invested nearly $2 million in philanthropy in the Connecticut-Massachusetts market during the 2017-2018 period.

Beyond that charity, the bank said it also invested $217.5 million during those same two years in “community benefits,” such as affordable-housing projects, and mortgages and small-business loans in lower-income areas.