When CEO Dean Marchessault shakes the last hand and says his final goodbyes to the 333 employees at American Eagle Financial Credit Union, successor Howard Brady will be left to face one of the toughest questions in business: How do you replace a legend? It’s tricky when the footprint is large. General Electric hasn’t been […]
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When CEO Dean Marchessault shakes the last hand and says his final goodbyes to the 333 employees at American Eagle Financial Credit Union, successor Howard Brady will be left to face one of the toughest questions in business: How do you replace a legend?
It’s tricky when the footprint is large.
General Electric hasn’t been the same since Jack Welch left. Kevin Ollie stumbled trying to succeed Jim Calhoun as UConn’s basketball coach.
For Brady, the answer is simple: “Stick to the plan.”
That would be the 15-year operations plan the East Hartford-based credit union launched in 2016. And it’s working.
Brady’s voice reflects a certain amount of awe as he ticks off Marchessault’s accomplishments in six years leading American Eagle:
Assets are up $1 billion, from $1.3 billion to $2.3 billion;
Membership is up about 50%, from 107,000 to more than 160,000;
There’s a new headquarters on East River Drive;
The service area has grown into Massachusetts.
One important aspect of that 15-year plan is a focus on staff development. Brady is proof that part also is working. He considers Marchessault, who hired him, as a mentor.
He came aboard as chief lending officer after building a career in mortgage finance, including work as a mortgage broker and in a credit union setting. He’s been serving as a senior vice president and the transition has been progressing “seamlessly” since Marchessault announced his retirement plans in mid-2021.
Still, like all good strategies, American Eagle’s 15-year plan has room to adjust and take advantage of new opportunities.
For Brady, that new opportunity is small business banking. As the COVID-induced economic slowdown intensified, Brady says, some small business owners were telling him that commercial banks were shutting them out and wouldn’t even return calls. The federal Paycheck Protection Program was promising help to small businesses, but not all of them were able to get access.
Was there anything American Eagle could do to help?
American Eagle wasn’t involved in PPP loans and had no infrastructure to support that kind of lending. Still, the answer was a resounding yes. In a world where relationships matter, Brady explains, the opportunity was just too great to ignore.
The credit union worked with a third-party fintech and within weeks was able to facilitate more than 100 PPP loans worth $4.7 million. The credit union made no profit on the deals, Brady explains, but the new relationships are propelling the credit union into a new era as a small business banker.
There’s some irony here. Back in 2013, Marchessault, then executive vice president and chief operations officer at American Eagle, announced the credit union was walking away from its small business lending program over frustration with a regulatory cap on such lending at 12.25% of assets.
“We aren’t sure what scale the commercial lending business is going to be due to regulations and competition from banks,” Marchessault said at the time. “So we feel this is not the time to build up a business lending function. ... We are better off focusing on our retail opportunities.”
The 12.25% cap remains. Even so, that leaves Brady a $250-million runway to foster those small business relationships.
Military family
In most other regards, the new CEO seems happy with the status quo. He sees no change to the credit union’s footprint, although he’d like to grow the existing business in Massachusetts’ Hampden County. The 14 branches seem the right number, he says, and key executives remain in place.
He expresses hope that a young line of third-party insurance products will gain traction. And he’d like to grow American Eagle’s mortgage business from its 4.5% share of the market toward the 7% national average market share for credit unions.
While the pandemic chased most employees from the headquarters and curtailed branch services, Brady says he would like to start bringing employees back starting in January. He envisions an initial focus on employee training events a few days a week.
One of the surprises of the experience is that productivity thrived. Members quickly adapted to digital transactions, reinforcing American Eagle’s decision to invest in its technology.
Brady is the product of a military family and says change, i.e. moving every few years, became routine. Young Brady experienced life on both coasts of the U.S. and spent some time in Wales. In one stop, his father led the U.S. submarine command in Iceland. He credits his father with instilling leadership skills and credits his mother with teaching him the benefits of building relationships.
He was a history major at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, but after graduation found his way into the mortgage industry. That path led him into lending work at Seasons Federal Credit Union in Middletown, where he worked his way up to senior vice president, and finally to American Eagle. He and his wife have two children and live in Old Saybrook.
American Eagle traces its roots to 1935, when it began serving Pratt & Whitney employees. Over the years, changes have been many, including a 2006 shift from a federal charter to a community charter.
