Five Questions With: Joseph A. MarcAurele

Joseph A. MarcAurele is chairman and CEO of Washington Trust Bancorp Inc. / COURTESY WASHINGTON TRUST BANCORP
Joseph A. MarcAurele is chairman and CEO of Washington Trust Bancorp Inc. / COURTESY WASHINGTON TRUST BANCORP

Joseph A. MarcAurele is chairman and CEO of Washington Trust Bancorp Inc., parent company of The Washington Trust Co., based in Westerly. The bank last week posted a slight first-quarter profit decline, as net income fell 0.7 percent to $10.9 million, or 64 cents per diluted share, compared with the same period last year. MarcAurele talks with Providence Business News about the bank’s performance, how he thinks about market expansion and what to expect next.
PBN: What can you tell our readers about the company’s first-quarter results?
MARCAURELE:
First of all we were very happy with the overall results. We either met or exceeded analyst estimates, which is always important. We had a better quarter this year than the last quarter of last year. So everything is progressing. I would say expenses were very well-controlled and I would say we operated on all cylinders. We had very solid commercial loan market and a little bit of a lull in deposits in the first quarter, and our mortgage business was strong. We had nice solid mortgage loans and our wealth-management business rebounded as the market came back.
PBN: Can you talk a little bit about your wealth-management business and how that’s grown?
MARCAURELE:
What makes us unique is that we have a very large wealth-management business, which allows fee incomes and a substantial residential mortgage business, which is bigger than most and complements our retail and commercial lending businesses. If you remember, in the third quarter of last year, we closed on an acquisition in Connecticut and that provided additional income in the last quarter of last year and certainly contributed again in the first quarter of this year. We feel like we’re well-positioned to continue to expand that business, on top of that and residential mortgage expansion.
PBN: What are you thinking in terms of branch expansion?
MARCAURELE:
We opened a new branch in Providence in the beginning of this year and we believe we can continue to expand our existing businesses through de novo offices or by acquiring, if the opportunity comes up. No we don’t have any new branches planned for 2016. We have kind of zeroed in on a couple sites, but we would not begin anything on those into the last quarter of this year or into the beginning of next year. We have the ability to build one or two branches a year to fit into our expense base, as there’s a little bit of an expense drag for a year or two after opening a new branch.
PBN: How about future acquisitions?
MARCAURELE:
We don’t have anything definite on the docket right now. I would say we put it through a couple of filters. One is just price and the other is once we buy it, can we grow it. That’s really the gating factors for us. From our prospective, we have a very strong currency and a lot of people would be willing to trade their stock for ours, but we don’t want to denigrate what we have in the value of the company without a pretty clear line about what we can add in value. But we look all the time. I’d say ‘constantly’ is a pretty good word to describe it.
PBN: What should we expect in the next quarter and for the rest of the year?
MARCAURELE:
I think we feel very good about the first quarter and we have good momentum. The economy on balance is getting better and I see evidence of that in [the] real estate market where there’s a higher velocity of sales where there hadn’t been before. We don’t see any reason why our performance can’t be solid throughout the rest of this year and start out the following year in the same way, so I would say we’re optimistic about future performance.

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