The Connecticut Bank & Trust Co., which is based in Hartford, has formed a partnership with Savino, Sturrock & Sullivan Financial, an East Hartford-based asset management company.
Progress is the name of the game in Hartford lately, and the city’s newest bank is also embracing that philosophy with yet another partnership that will expand its services.
The Connecticut Bank & Trust Co. last week announced a partnership with East Hartford-based Savino, Sturrock & Sullivan Financial, an asset management company. The partnership is the fourth for The CBT. The commercial bank’s growth strategy, which includes the partnerships and rapid branch expansion, is nontraditional, but integral to its plan to achieve a strong presence in the marketplace, according to Anson Hall, The CBT’s treasurer and chief financial officer.
“The two firms will work together to provide clients with a combination of sophisticated financial solutions and superior banking services,” added David A. Lentini, chairman and chief executive officer of The CBT, in a prepared statement.
The new partnership is designed to provide asset management services for clients such as small-business owners with high-net-worth accounts like 401(k) accounts or pension funds. In June, the bank announced an investment agreement with St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Raymond James Financial Services to offer investment services to CBT customers.
The partnership with Savino, Sturrock & Sullivan is designed to help customers with bigger accounts that need more support, Hall said.
“These guys are more likely to handle larger accounts,” he noted.
Such partnerships, he added, allow the bank to expand its services and are a win-win for both partners. Customers had been asking for asset management services, Hall said. By offering the service, CBT customers who need asset management can stay with the bank, rather than switching to a larger institution.
“This is the bread and butter of big banks,” Hall said.
The CBT also has partnerships with an insurance agency and a payroll servicing company.
“They all fit nicely into our basket of services,” Hall said.
In addition, the bank is rapidly expanding its branch network, with plans to open a new branch about every six months. The bank now has five branches in Hartford, Vernon, Glastonbury, West Hartford and its newest location in Newington. The one in Vernon opened late last year and the sixth branch, in Windsor, is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of this year. A branch in Rocky Hill is scheduled to open in the middle of next year, making the institution Connecticut’s fastest-growing new bank ever, according to Lentini, the bank’s chairman and chief executive officer.
Another step toward further expansion is to put more ATMs, which The CBT has named “Barneys,” in more locations. The bank is a member of the SUM network, which allows customers to withdraw money from other SUM ATMs without a fee, but the addition of more Barneys will give customers increased access.
‘Very Specialized’
The CBT’s plan from the beginning was to expand quickly, Lentini said in a previous interview. So the bank raised about $35 million in capital.
“It takes a major investment,” he said.
The bank’s executives are digesting the latest partnerships before making more plans for such expansions of services, but plan to continue to open branches, Hall said.
Hall compared The CBT’s strategy to that of another de novo bank that opened its doors a little more than year before The CBT’s opening in March 2004. Wethersfield-based Connecticut River Community Bank opened in late 2002, and has grown in a more traditional way, Hall said. It has two branches now, and is focused on achieving profitability before growth. The CBT, however, made raising a large amount of initial capital a priority, and is working on achieving a strong presence in the market.
According to John Carusone, president of the Bank Analysis Center in Hartford, The CBT’s growth strategy is unusual.
“[The] CBT has a very focused, growth-oriented strategy,” he said in an interview after the bank announced its partnership with Raymond James. “They have a pretty defined diversification strategy, as well.”
And the bank has several things in its favor, Carusone said. The management team is talented, the bank has an abundance of capital and the board of directors is experienced. The CBT also is located in a rapidly consolidating bank market. “Executing strategies is the main challenge at this point,” Carusone said.
Savino, Sturrock & Sullivan was founded in 1988 and has $600 million in assets under management.
The CBT took its name from the original Connecticut Bank & Trust, a popular Hartford-based institution that closed in the 1990s. Organizers of the new CBT hoped the association with the name, and the association with other symbols it adopted, would translate into a good customer base. The Barney symbol also comes from the old CBT.
