Norman Roos
Age: 66
Title: Partner, Robinson & Cole LLP
Experience: 42 years
As a young attorney, Norm Roos got the assignment of boning up on an arcane new law called the "Truth in Lending" Act. Little did he know how relevant that bout of studying would be in a career spent as one of Connecticut banks’ most trusted advisors when it comes to regulations and compliance. Currently the legal advisor to the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association, Roos has had a storied career in Connecticut finance.
Q: How did you end up in Hartford? Did you grow up in Connecticut?
A: I actually grew up in Western Mass., in Springfield, just up river. I went to college in Philadelphia, then law school in Michigan. I was prepared to take a job in Chicago, and an opportunity came up in Hartford, and the job in Chicago was put on hold due to a hiring freeze. So I accepted a job in Hartford with a little boutique law firm, Leventhal & Krasow. This was in the ’70s – I’m embarrassed to say how long ago. And so I stayed with that firm, added my name to it a few years later, and I stayed there for over 20 years. That was Leventhal, Krasow & Roos. We were a boutique firm, did a lot of work for banks and thrifts, and lot of finance and real estate work.
Q: You went to Wharton for undergrad, a top business school. Why go into law instead?
A: I had always wanted to be a lawyer. Going through Wharton was a valuable experience; even at that time it had a reputation as one of the best undergraduate business schools, and I thought that would translate well to a law practice. At lot of my classmates at Wharton did go on to law school. So it was a pretty natural progression.
Q: You said you were attracted to working for a boutique firm? What was the reason for that?
A: Well, a lot of the larger law firms where I had interviewed, it was a lot less personal. You were a bit of an interchangeable part: You needed to bill a certain amount of hours, be in the office for such and such amount of time. The philosophy of this boutique firm was a little different. The leader of the firm, who became my mentor for many years, Dave Leventhal, [for him] it was really about getting into the work, putting yourself in the client’s shoes and helping them out, and delivering the highest possible value to those clients. We were both workaholics, so we sort of blended well. It was more personal – you got involved with clients more directly, more quickly. It was a good training ground, and gave me an opportunity to advance more quickly … I was there for five years, became a partner, and my name was on the door a year or two later. The downside is, when you’re a small firm and you have an off week or month there’s not a lot of other people to absorb that. At a small firm, the highs can be a little higher, the lows can be a little lower. It can be a bit of a bumpy ride. But it worked very well for me for many years.
Q: Do you remember the first big assignment you worked on?
A: Well, one early assignment that I’m proud of, looking back … we had a client, a large commercial bank, that wanted to get into the residential lending market [and they asked us to draft the new mortgage documents for them]. They showed us what they were currently using – it looked like it had been drafted at King Arthur’s court or something, like it should have been on a parchment scroll. So our charge was to make them modern, understandable, easy to administer. We worked on the project for months … the end product was a one-page document, and I still have a copy of it: A note, a mortgage, Truth in Lending disclosure, billing statement, all combined in one. On an 8½ by 11 piece of paper … [clients] could read the document, understand it enough to ask questions. Every time I get some crazy, convoluted mortgage document now, I think, you know, this could be done in a sentence.
Q: With all the new compliance requirements on the industry now, would such a thing ever be possible again? Or has the whole loan process just gotten irretrievably complicated?
A: We’ve gone through a number of cycles [as an industry]. Prior to the early ’80s, mortgage loans were made, by banks, to their customers. There were a few non-bank lenders – McCue Mortgage, for example – but by and large it was a local bank product. But then with the advent of the secondary market things started to change … I think what’s happening now is that we’re in a period of hyper-regulation. The Dodd-Frank Act was 2,319 pages, but that’s nothing compared to the hundreds of pages of regulations that have come out since … the rules seem to constantly change. If you look at the value to consumers, and I’ve worked with Truth in Lending for over 40 years, and given all the costs and expense and time and trouble to make disclosures more meaningful, I’m not sure it’s gotten better. The CFPB has some good ideas, and the new disclosures hopefully will be effective, but having seen all the changes over the last few decades, I’m a little bit skeptical.
Q: How have you seen the industry change over the years?
A: Where the clients in the earliest part of my career were all local, [as the years have gone by] I’ve found myself working on an increasing number of matters where the clients were national, not local. And law firms themselves have followed that trend – the firm I worked for before I joined Robinson was an international firm. The only thing that stays the same, with all this change going on, is that a lot of the people don’t move. Here I am, 40 years later, I’m looking out of my office window right now at the very first office I ever worked in. I’m in Commercial Plaza [in Hartford] right now, I can see where I started 40 years ago. And I’m not alone – some people have moved, but a large number have stayed. The work has changed, the clients have changed, but a lot of the people are the same … It’s funny, I’m very involved in a number of national organizations, and sometimes I’ll see colleagues from Connecticut when I’m travelling to conferences and such that I never seen when we’re here, because we’re too busy doing work.
Top Five Regulatory And Compliance Challenges In Banking Right Now
- Disclosures.
- The CFPB – unlike any other banking regulator, they answer solely to the consumer.
- HUMDA reporting.
- Transitioning to fully electronic mortgage transactions.
- Cyber-security.
