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In today’s commercial real estate market in Connecticut, having the right talent is crucial to increasing production.
Using data from The Warren Group, The Commercial Record has ranked the 50 fastest-growing lenders in Connecticut this year, by comparing residential and commercial lending volumes and numbers of loans in the first six months of 2025 to those in the first six months of 2024.
Ascend Bank – the renamed merger of Guilford Savings Bank and Eastern Connecticut Savings Bank – saw its loan volume increase by 5500 percent in the first two quarters of 2025 compared to 2024 according to The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record.
“We have six very experienced industry veterans on the lending side, and they’re able to get out and penetrate the market, and through their contacts, are able to bring in a lot of really good transactions,” Chief Lending Officer Lyle Fulton said.
Liberty Bank saw its loan production increase by 217 percent in 2025.
“We have a great team,” said Senior Vice President and Head of Retail Lending Matthew Cammarota. “I credit it mostly to our loan officers. We have a great group of loan officers, very connected to the market.”
Cammarota also noted that being a mutual bank has given Liberty Bank the flexibility to invest in new products and technology.
“We are committed to our communities,” he said. “Instead of chasing shareholder returns quarter to quarter, we can make investments for the long term. I think our long history, our strong financial condition, the fact that we’re mutual, perhaps most importantly, our culture and our commitment to our community, I think all of those things are what sets us apart. All of those things translate into being able to make good investments in our people.”
Who Are Connecticut’s Fastest-Growing Lenders of 2025?
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Having the right talent is crucial in commercial real estate where banks have to make sure that deals work for the lender as well as the financial institution itself. For Ascend in particular, executives said the bank’s staff work with investors of varying experience levels so loan officers need to know how to walk someone through the entire process or how to work with an industry veteran.
“It’s easy to bring in business, then you really have to evaluate it, make sure that it’s an asset that we want to invest our money in,” Fulton said. “Having experienced staff is a tremendous help. They’ll handle anything from a $250,000 mortgage up to a $13 million mortgage, and everything in between. So the sophistication among the investors is wide ranging. So you have to have the ability to a sit down with those people that might be getting into investment real estate starting out, be able to talk to them about the pros and cons of doing it, and then able to evaluate whether they’re able to do it and whether they’re purchasing the right thing up to very sophisticated investors that know how to do it.
Additionally, Fulton said, the bank’s employees use their longtime knowledge of their markets to consider any transaction. While multifamily investment sales and development continues to be a resilient sector, the same can’t be said for the office sector. But not all deals are alike.
“There’s a big difference between an office tower in one of our cities versus a smaller office in the suburbs,” he said. “People are going back to work. Office will never not be a thing. It has to recalibrate. It’s the larger office buildings that are finding the most hurt, because people are reducing the size of their square footage, or at least they’re coming up and they’re negotiating lesser rents. So we will look at office. It’s not all bad. Industrial has slowed a little bit, from what I hear, but retail still pretty strong.
Ascend’s July 1 merger with Eastern Connecticut Savings Bank means the bank is now visible in the latter’s market, Senior Vice President Paul Pirrotta said, hopefully increasing the bank’s commercial loan activity further.
Fastest-Growing Lenders Navigated Uncertainty
Interest rates remain high and economic uncertainty has only added to the difficulties the institutions can face. Along with increased interest rates, construction cost inflation has added added difficulty to making deals pencil.
“Still waiting to see how tariffs are going to affect the economy,” Fulton said. “From a loan standpoint, it could affect your borrower. If you’re dealing with an owner occupied piece of real estate where there’s a manufacturer, are they shipping their product overseas? Are they importing their inventory?”
While interest rates are declining, Fulton doesn’t believe this will have a large impact on the CRE market in Connecticut.
“The rates that the [Federal Reserve] are doing are short term rates. So that’s going to affect credit cards. It’s going to affect home equity lines of credit, operating lines of credit for businesses. So that’s a positive,” Fulton said. “On the real estate side, [loan terms] typically go out longer – five or 10 years – those Fed drops don’t impact it as much. They’re mostly driven by the market and the bond market. So we’ll have to see what the expectation is for inflation that might keep rates up might keep them down. So the Fed is going to continue to drop rates a couple times, they say this year, and like I said, that will affect some borrowers, but for the long term investor will have to wait and see.”
Additionally, he noted that the bank is keeping an eye on increasing insurance rates and how that will affect borrowers’ ability to afford debt.
“There are some things that are impacting real estate in Connecticut,” Fulton said. “Insurance rates obviously are going up, taxes, utilities, so the cost of operating real estate seems to be going up. So that’s one thing that we’ll have to keep an eye on.”
Ascend hopes to do more affordable housing as it recognizes the need among its customers and residents. It also noted that it aims to do more commercial real estate deals for owner-occupied real estate.
