A Spirit of Generosity Infuses Webster Bank

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By Sara Poirier Correa
Sentinel Reporter

David Rabin, vice president of the Greenwich banking center located on Mason FitzPatrick, executive vice president and head of Webster Private Bank. Photo by John Ferris Robben
David Rabin, vice president of the Greenwich banking center located on Mason FitzPatrick, executive vice president and head of Webster Private Bank. Photo by John Ferris Robben

Mike George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Harold Webster Smith believed in helping his fellow man. With $25,000 borrowed from family and friends, the founder of First Federal Savings and Loan of Waterbury took on the unthinkable during a time of the country’s worst financial crisis to help make customers’ dreams of homeownership a reality.

Eighty years after its founding in 1935, that spirit of wanting to give back has far from waivered for the company now doing business as Webster Bank.

“I think I’d have a harder time seeing myself at an organization that didn’t have [charity] as part of the culture,” said Dan FitzPatrick, executive vice president and head of Webster Private Bank. “I think it’s always been something that’s important.”

The Greenwich resident said volunteering and charity run deep in the Webster fabric, including offering a day off for employees to give back in some way. The company is even celebrating its anniversary year with 80 Days of Giving—a program that allows employees who work with charitable organizations between October and the end of December to nominate them to receive one of 80 $1,000 grants from Webster Bank.

The bank is also in the midst of its 18th annual food drive, which for Greenwich will benefit Neighbor to Neighbor.

David Rabin, vice president of the Greenwich banking center located on Mason Street, agreed that at Webster, “the culture is a little different.” Everyone in town knew George Bailey and his family in the classic Christmastime movie, and that’s the kind of atmosphere Rabin said he loves most about the place he works.

“Who in their right mind, in the middle of the Great Depression, would start a bank in 1935 in Waterbury, Connecticut?” Rabin said, adding that Smith’s initial investment has now increased one million times, but the company, while large in resources, still maintains its local feel.

“We have a Wall Street mentality with a Main Street service level,” Rabin said of the publicly traded company.

He added, “We have big bank solutions, but we have our own, much smaller infrastructure that allows us to be much more nimble and allows us to make decisions locally.”

While not a requirement for employment at Webster, Rabin stressed, being local has worked out well for the Greenwich center, which opened in late 2013. It has consistently been ranked No. 1 among the company’s more than 160 locations across four states, in terms of growth of new customers and size of existing business.

“I think people, for the most part, want somebody who when I give them my business card, my cell phone is on there… they know I live here,” the Glenville resident said, adding that he gets calls at the gym on a Friday night or Saturday morning, for example, and that’s OK.

“That’s the differentiator,” he said, referring to how his bank stacks up against the competition.

Adding to the “localness” that Rabin said has helped keep the Greenwich center at the top is the fact that he is “a guy who cares about the community because he lives in it.” While Rabin serves on as many as five boards of directors at various area organizations, his wife, Lauren, was recently elected to the Greenwich Board of Education.

“When you walk in, you feel like you’re at home,” he added of the Greenwich location, which is in a Victorian home with a wraparound porch – not the typical bank look.

FitzPatrick, who started his career as a New York attorney at a firm big on pro bono work, added that the Greenwich center “has a very different feel from a bank.”

In addition to the local accolades, Webster Private Bank—which deals with high net worth clients—was just named the Top Private Bank by the readers of the Connecticut Law Tribune.

“It’s our people,” Rabin said of what helps contribute to his banking center’s success.

As for the overall work the company does, FitzPatrick said it’s all just “part of the personality of the bank.”

“We never lost that sense of being part of the communities in which we operate, and [giving back through charity work] is a real tangible way of showing that,” he said. “It goes to the heart of what the bank is all about.”

Webster Bank is located at 85 Mason Street. For more information, call 203-869-0753 or visit www.websteronline.com.

 

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