Photo courtesy of First County Bank
Rick Muskus
Chief Lending Officer, First County Bank
Industry experience: 30 years
Age: 57
First County Bank has launched a specialized suite of new products on its insurance lending platform, as Chief Lending Officer Rick Muskus says the bank is looking to compete with larger institutions.
As economic conditions grow more uncertain, Muskus says the bank is positioning itself as a reliable financial partner for businesses. As a mutual bank, Muskus says First County takes a longer-term view to business relationships as the bank hopes to help businesses as they grow in scale.
Q: How important are these insurance products for businesses?
A: These products for supporting insurance agencies and their client base are incredibly important. There are a lot of banks that are out there, large and small, supporting small businesses but I think the unique proposition to a First County is our geography. Central to Westchester County [New York] and Fairfield County, where we do most of our business. We also target the entire state of Connecticut. We have unique needs for this geography.
I think all small businesses are always looking for opportunities to pair with financial institutions that understand their business, understand their business model, have the ability really to see the forest through the trees in terms of the future and how these businesses really need to bob and weave in this economic environment. So what we simply decided was to formally pair two existing loan products that are inherently complementary. They are that way because we have a get a product set that supports agencies ability to a operate effectively from a working capital standpoint, and then have the ability to expand their businesses through acquisitions or other targeted means, and have access to loan products that can help them do that.
The third thing is having access to bankers that understand the agency business and certainly have the ability to talk the same language. We’re talking about real meat-and-potatoes types of products that aren’t meant to be exotic in nature. They’re just meant to be baseline and effective.
For a smaller institution like First County, we have the ability to react quickly. We have the ability to interface in person, which we still like to do. Banks still like to see people and we take pride in that. As we start to deploy these products at the agency level first, we’re looking to get in front of people, tell our story, and hear their story, and really determine what the best path is to help solve their needs. These may be an immediate need, like in all small business, they have something pressing that they need to deal with. Then there’s the future needs. “Where do we want to be in five or 10 years? We need to partner with the right financial institution, and that needs to bear out sooner than later.”
[First County Bank] is not in the business of doing a loan and having them move on to other institutions. We’re looking to provide a one-stop shop for their future quota.
I’ve been involved in financing life insurance premiums for probably a decade now. When we brought forth the premium financing platform here, I developed that a few years ago, and we started to do our first few cases. Interest rate environment impacts the volume in that space, as you can imagine but we decided the best way to deploy that product, and it’s going right to the agency source. The agents are the ones interfacing directly with the clients on life insurance solutions and financial planning solutions, and we’re providing the agent with the premium financing tools they might need to better address the client’s needs.
This is really meant to target estate planning. Anyone who takes out a life insurance policy is thinking that this is for my heirs, of course. So when we’re looking at how people can actually generate a much larger death benefit and potentially a much larger cash value within a policy, an agent may may look to a premium financing solution to help address that and that’s where we come in.
Q: What is the importance of having a diverse product set to be able to keep customers in the ecosystem from that financial and also being able to build up deposits?
A: In this day and age, the ability for community banks to innovate typically means we need to rely on technology vendors to do that. In most cases, we have the ability to do everything the large banks do. It may not be an in-house product, but we certainly have the ability to innovate, keep up with technology demands like the larger institutions.
There is the need for that small business to actually really embrace their institution and feel a connection, which is what we try to establish with each and every person, regardless of the size of the relationship because a small relationship one day becomes a big relationship. We have clients that have been here for 40 and 50 years. Being able to establish that personal connection means more today than it ever has been because small businesses in the turmoil of the current and maybe past couple of years economic cycle. It can be scary at times. Entrepreneurs in particular, they risk everything they have every day.
When we start to address what small businesses need, they need a reliable financial partner. They might define reliable differently. We define it as being here for those clients, small, medium and large. Being there for our client base, 24/7, and being able to actually see what the long-term proposition is for each and every one of those small businesses.
When we start to innovate in packaging products like we had with this insurance effort, we just decided to put a really strong marketing campaign to make us more visible in the market and organize the opportunity to make these businesses think “I think these people get it, and I want to hear more.” You should expect us to try and do the same thing with other industries. Insurance, we have a very strong basis of expertise in but we do an awful lot of construction lending here. We do a lot of investment commercial real estate lending and owner occupied commercial real estate lending.
We will continue to innovate in those spaces and package product sets so that clients in this economic cycle will look towards the much smaller bank to fit their needs. Bigger doesn’t always mean better. I believe that today it can get very complicated. As you grow, your bank needs to be there for you.
Muskus’ Five Favorite Hobbies
- Spending time with family
- Being outdoors
- Eating good Polish food
- Watching college sports
- Skiing
