Russ:  Hi I’m Russ Capper and welcome to another episode of Green Bank Business Builders.  Out topic today is commercial banking and my guest is Castel Hibbert, executive vice president of commercial banking here at Green Bank.  Castel, welcome to the show.

Castel:  Thank you, good to meet you.

Russ:  I expect a lot of our viewers have certainly heard of commercial banking, probably a lot of them know exactly what it means, but you’re an expert a veteran so tell us exactly what it is about.

Castel:  At Green Bank, the way we define commercial banking is middle to upper middle market companies, companies that typically generate revenues of ten million to seven hundred million dollars.  Some banks may define it as smaller business banking that comes in the one to ten million dollar range, but ours is at a larger revenue in terms of revenue size.

Russ:  And what services do you offer to them?

Castel:  Most of our bankers, first let me tell you, are typically twenty to thirty year bankers and we typically provide a lot of consulting services to our clients. We help them grow their business by lending them money and helping provide a strategy to help them grow the business from point A to point B. And then we also handle a lot of investments for them.

Russ:  How many commercial bankers are in your department?

Castel:  In our particular group we have about six. We have a couple of groups here at the bank that have teams with commercial bankers in it, so about fourteen to sixteen commercial bankers.

Russ:  How do you differentiate yourself? How does Green Bank say we are different than everyone else?

Castel:  A lot of the banks have a similar focus and direction, but I think the way we differentiate ourselves is we have a large senior team that understands the business that has been in the industry for a long time. And they are charged with developing and bringing in high quality relationships for the bank. And that is really key for us.

Russ:  You have already mentioned that you have a lot of them at twenty to thirty years, how many years do you have in the business?

Castel:  Thirty-three years.

Russ:  Oh my goodness.  Alright, give us an example of a customer you have helped out.

Castel:  I have one customer that is in the restaurant business, they’re a six year customer.  We I meet them they had twenty-seven restaurants, today they have over three hundred restaurants.

Russ:  I would call that a success story.

Castel:  Great success story. They wanted to grow the business and buy a number of stores from their franchisor. I met them through a referral source of mine and we have been able to help them grow over the last six years.

Russ:  That is quite the success story.  Do you have one that was sort of challenging or out of the ordinary too?

Castel:  I do.  I have one customer that was interested in opening up a body shop and what we had to do with him was we took one of his investment real estate properties, because he was short on collateral and did not have a lot of experience in that industry.  So he found a partner to work with that was experienced in the industry. And we were able to take that collateral and put a partner together with him so we were able to approve the loan.

Russ:  It’s almost like you are a business consultant out there helping these guys.

Castel:  That’s the way we view ourselves and that is the way we want our customers to view us also.  I appreciate you suggesting that.

Russ:  Alright, Castel I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

Castel:  Thank you, I appreciate you very much.

Russ:  And that wraps up my discussion with Castel Hibbert. And that wraps up this episode of Green Bank Business Builders.