BofA’s post-crisis picture optimistic

ECONOMIC ENGINE: Bank of America President William Hatfield says that the financial institution generated $65 million in small-business loans in the  region last year. / COURTESY  BANK OF AMERICA
ECONOMIC ENGINE: Bank of America President William Hatfield says that the financial institution generated $65 million in small-business loans in the region last year. / COURTESY BANK OF AMERICA

William F. Hatfield is president of Bank of America in the Rhode Island market, a position that allows him to see the details of the state’s economy as well as to cast an eye toward the nation. As the bank emerges from the “hard work” of cleaning up after the nation’s financial meltdown, Hatfield sees “great opportunity” for his company and the region.

PBN: Recently, Bank of America CEO Brian T. Moynihan said he’d like to do his job for the rest of his life. Would you want to do your job for the rest of your life?
HATFIELD: I love what I’m doing here at Bank of America and particularly in Rhode Island. I am now 32 years into this company. … It’s been a great run, and I’m real excited about what’s before us. Whether it’s the rest of my life or whatever, I’m excited by what I see.

PBN: Tell me about that. What do you see before you?
HATFIELD: A lot of great opportunity. … Our company has gone through a transitional period coming out of the financial crisis and … we have evolved. … We have worked hard to simplify the company, focus the company. … And with the platform that we have, it’s a real opportunity for us to make sure each and every customer knows what we can do to help them.

PBN: So the last five years have been cleaning up from the financial crisis?
HATFIELD: [There has been] a lot of hard work to address the various challenges that we were faced with, but we’ve made huge progress. Our balance sheet is incredibly strong. We have among the highest capital ratios of any company in the business. … We have a very significant appetite to grow our loan business through all segments of our business, be it retail, at the consumer level, with mortgages, small business, business banking, middle-market companies, large corporate, throughout. … We have been investing in our talent to make sure we’ve got strong people on the field, telling the story, engaging, and that’s exciting.

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PBN: Do you feel like the regional and community banks took away some of your business while you were doing that hard work to clean up?
HATFIELD: Certainly, the whole market was kind of impacted by the financial turn, and we worked very hard with our customers to make sure they were taken care of. … [But] if you look at our [market] share statistics, we absolutely maintained share throughout the downturn. … Actually, we grew in this market.

PBN: But SBA loans dropped significantly in the last few years, and the bank recognized that some resources had to be put back into that market. HATFIELD: We did. A little over a year ago, we really focused on that small-business segment. We said, we’re going to hire 1,000 bankers across the country.

PBN: Did you get there?
HATFIELD: We absolutely got there. We added a little more than a dozen here in Rhode Island and on the SouthCoast. They’re in place now. Our small-business activity [in the region] in 2012 was up 78 percent over 2011. And that’s loan activity. We generated about $65 million in small-business loans last year.

PBN: What has changed in the Rhode Island economy over the last five years and what do you see going forward?
HATFIELD: We’ve seen the headlines … with respect to unemployment. And although progress is being made, it’s still among the highest in the country. I think we understand fully some of the structural issues that we are dealing with and these are not temporary issues, these are issues that require long-term fixes, namely, education, matching of skill set to opportunity and really providing an environment where people can be educated, find jobs and help grow our economy.
The economy itself is going to need some public support. What I mean by that is the historic tax credit, for example, to stimulate some investment in projects that are kind of on the sidelines ready to go, but need that confirmation that says there’s an economic opportunity with the tax credit to kind of drive it home. So we are ready to participate, and frankly we are ready to lead, given the capacity that we have to do that.

PBN: How would you define leadership in this case for the bank?
HATFIELD: In addition to making available our balance sheet to help support projects, we need to be thought leaders as well, true community leaders, and make sure we are very actively engaged in the dialog.

PBN: It seems the leadership in the General Assembly is focused on economic development this year. What would you say the top three to five things would be that need to be enacted in order to engender more growth?
HATFIELD: I think there are a few things. I touched on one – the historic tax credit and bringing that back into play is going to be very important.
There has been considerable discussion about a health-sciences center in Providence, also known as the [University of Rhode Island-Rhode Island College] nursing school. That’s catalytic and could be a real driver of economic development in Providence if a plan can come together that brings these two institutions to Providence to create a nursing school that can collaborate with the hospitals, can collaborate with Johnson & Wales [University], can collaborate with Brown [University] to really complete a very, very strong health sciences and health services platform in Providence. And that’s going to require some legislative leadership around it as well. We also have got to stay the course relative to taxation. One of the criticisms of Rhode Island has been high taxes, and we are indeed a high-cost state. That’s OK if you are providing high value. … But we’ve got to get to the point where we are providing high value. That said, we’ve got to maintain the line on tax competitiveness.
But I think really getting to the point where we have good, consistent, well-thought-out policies and appropriate incentives that apply to all will kind of give us that foundation so we can move forward.

PBN: Are you optimistic about the future?
HATFIELD: Our GDP nationally is probably going to grow at 2.5 percent this year. I hope Rhode Island can do that and kind of keep up with the national trend. We’re going to have to work hard to do that. What I’m very optimistic about is our ability, at the bank, to help Rhode Island grow. … [For example] if someone is starting a business, we are there to help them. We’ve worked with several entrepreneurs over the course of the last couple of years to start businesses, some of which have grown to be quite substantial.
There are some very good growth stories here. … And I’m encouraged by some of the dialog that I have with people who are starting businesses and getting some traction, raising capital and getting traction.
We have been here a long time. We take our responsibilities here really seriously. The philanthropic work that we do will continue. We’ve got a strong labor force here that will continue.

PBN: Years ago you had an office in the Industrial Trust tower, the “Superman Building.” Given all the talk about converting it into residential space, would it make a good apartment?
HATFIELD: The apartment that I want is the one on the 25th floor, where literally you can do the 360, you can look well into Massachusetts, you can look completely down Narragansett Bay and you can look to western Rhode Island. It’s spectacular. That’s the ultimate.•

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