National Bank of Middlebury President Caroline Carpenter and Meaghan McLaughlin, Chief Lending Officer.
Caroline joined Rotary in the 90s when she first moved here to find community and always felt very welcomed and Rotary was supportive of women in leadership.
Caroline started by giving a brief history of the bank. In 1831, the Bank of Middlebury was capitalized by hundreds of shareholders and “cleaned the house” to make sure handling money was done the right and honest way. This is still an independent and local bank to support those in the area. Granted, it is important to have banks of all sizes depending on needs.
Caroline discussed the many challenges the bank faced in the past year due to the recession, the tunnel project in town, high interest rates, inverted rates, etc - but it remains stable! She discussed succession planning as many key members have retired and she is thinking about the plans for the bank in 20-30 years from now. Caroline has built an executive team and introduced Meaghan to talk more about her role.
Meaghan is the Vice President and Chief Lending Officer wearing many hats. She started with NBM in 2010 and had various roles such as credit analyst, credit underwriting, mortgages, commercial lending, etc. After Sarah Cowen, well known and key bank member retired - Caroline worked with a talent alignment team and Meaghan stepped into the Vice President Role and continued to do lending support as she loved that role. Now, there are about $330 million in loans. Many of these are residential and helping people with housing and some are small businesses. However, small businesses are stable, but seem to be operating on a “need” basis versus a “want” basis for loans at this time.
Caroline then talked about some of the other challenges being faced including fraud. A lot of communication has gone out about check writing. Post office mailboxes are being exploited for checks and people are taking envelopes out of the mail and editing checks. They take big checks, change the payer name, and steal money. This is a long legal battle, so please keep an eye on your checks, when they are deposited, and who they are deposited to - review images! The most secure payments are through ACH(Automated Clearing House) or venmo, paypal, apple pay etc.
Thank you Caroline and Meaghan!
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