Delaware County Bank president sees bright future

Ron Seif­fert, the new Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Delaware County Bank, works at his desk. (Gazette | Dustin Ensinger)

DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

After a cou­ple of tumul­tuous years for the Delaware County Bank in which it dealt with finan­cial losses and branch clo­sures, its finan­cial out­look is improv­ing under new leadership.

Ron Seif­fert, 53, was hired in Sep­tem­ber to become the Bank’s pres­i­dent and CEO, and he has hit the ground run­ning, devel­op­ing a strate­gic plan that is already being implemented.

“I think we’ve got it 99 per­cent right in what we need to focus on,” Seif­fert said of the strate­gic plan. “Now it’s all about exe­cu­tion. You can have a great plan, but if you don’t exe­cute, you’re not going to be a high per­form­ing bank.”

A large part of the plan will focus on small busi­ness. This year, the Bank plans to roll out a suite of check­ing prod­ucts, a new line of credit and a new equip­ment leas­ing prod­uct, all tai­lored toward small businesses.

“Small busi­nesses lead an econ­omy out of a reces­sion,” he said. “We need, as a finan­cial insti­tu­tion, to pro­vide the credit and the ancil­lary ser­vices to enhance the abil­ity of small busi­nesses to grow and get us out of this economy.”

Seif­fert also has his sights set on cre­at­ing three new senior level posi­tions. One would focus on res­i­den­tial mort­gage and direct con­sumer lend­ing and another will serve as chief credit officer.

A third senior posi­tion would be in charge of deposit prod­uct man­age­ment and alter­na­tive deliv­ery sys­tems, includ­ing online, mobile and elec­tronic banking.

“We need to be as com­pet­i­tive as the large banks in web bank­ing,” said Seiffert.

Another com­po­nent of the strate­gic plan is to improve the bank­ing expe­ri­ence inside branches. While the Bank’s cus­tomers already seem to be happy with their expe­ri­ence, Seif­fert said, there is always room for improvement.

“The con­sumer today is very, very busy. They don’t have time to waste,” he said. “We need to con­tinue to take advan­tage of our small­ness — to be more nim­ble, to be more car­ing to our cus­tomer and to be more responsive.”

The Bank plans to announce a major cap­i­tal cam­paign in the very near future to raise funds to pay for the changes that Seif­fert hopes to fully imple­ment by year’s end.

After work­ing in the bank­ing indus­try for 25 years, Seif­fert believes that goal is very possible.

Seif­fert began his bank­ing career at Hunt­ing­ton Bank, where he spent 23 years, five of which he served as vice chair­man. He left Hunt­ing­ton to become exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and national head of busi­ness bank­ing for Bank One Cor­po­ra­tion, which has since been pur­chased by JP Mor­gan Chase.

“After 25 years in bank­ing I thought, ‘Maybe I need a break,’” he said.

From there, Seif­fert moved on to Ohio Domini­can Uni­ver­sity where he served as chief finan­cial offi­cer and vice pres­i­dent of uni­ver­sity resources.

While he enjoyed his five years at the uni­ver­sity, he jumped at the chance to lead the Bank when he learned of the oppor­tu­nity, he said.

“I always wanted to get back into the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try, but I did not want to get back into big bank­ing — the bureau­cracy, the pol­i­tics and so forth. Been there, done that and didn’t want to go back to it,” he said.

“Delaware County Bank is big enough to have the req­ui­site prod­ucts and ser­vices that allow us to be com­pet­i­tive in tar­geted mar­ket seg­ments but yet small enough to still be nim­ble and cus­tomer oriented.”

But it wasn’t only the Bank’s rel­a­tively small size that attracted Seif­fert. He was also intrigued by the loy­alty to the Bank he found among cus­tomers, share­hold­ers and com­mu­nity members.

“They really gen­uinely, sin­cerely want us to win. This com­mu­nity wants us to win,” he said. “Our share­hold­ers want us to win and our cus­tomers want us to win. That’s what you get when you have a com­mu­nity bank embraced by the community.”

Seif­fert, who has a wife and three daugh­ters, was one of five can­di­dates that inter­viewed for the posi­tion. His resume and bank­ing expe­ri­ence was cer­tainly a plus, but so was the fact that he was out of the indus­try at the time that it nearly col­lapsed, said board mem­ber Don­ald Wolf, who was also part of the selec­tion committee.

“As you talked with him you just imme­di­ately liked him, respected him, respected his knowl­edge,” said Wolf. “He just han­dles him­self extremely effectively.”

The Bank’s prob­lem loans port­fo­lio, net finan­cial losses and loan delin­quen­cies were all down in 2011 com­pared with the 2010 numbers.

In 2010, the Bank lost $12.3 mil­lion. Last year, it lost just $2.5 mil­lion. Loan delin­quen­cies in 2011 were down to 2.24 per­cent, com­pared with the 4.01 per­cent delin­quency rate recorded in 2010.

Seif­fert plans to keep the momen­tum going through the rest of 2012 and into 2013.

“We’re back,” he said. “We’re back in a healthy way and we’re here to win in Delaware County.”

Posted by Dustin Ensinger on Feb 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.