BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The new president of DLP Bank is an experienced growth manager and said he can expand the Starke-based financial institution while improving customer service and meeting the lending needs of Bradford and Union Counties.
Tom Fontaine grew the last bank he led by nearly six-fold. He said his immediate goals for DLP are to provide stability to the bank, shepherd the business through a major technology upgrade in the spring and deepen the business’s roots in its communities.
Fontaine was raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts. After graduating from the University of Vermont, he worked at an investment management firm before landing his first community banking job at Middlesex Savings Bank as a credit analyst.
He then signed on as a workout consultant, turning around failing firms.
“That lasted for about a year and a half,” he recalled. “You basically went into companies and laid everybody off.”
Since he left Middlesex on good terms, he returned to the savings bank with $1 billion in assets, where he stayed an additional five years.
“I realized that I really wanted to take on some management role within the bank,” he said, “which wasn’t readily available. People were not leaving positions; it was kind of an old, staid community-based bank.”
Growing the bank
He took an opportunity at Bank Boston, which merged with Fleet Bank right after he joined.
Fontaine said that while he picked up valuable skills with the huge financial institution, he realized his heart was in community banking. He was on the board with the CEO of Wellesley Cooperative Bank at the Wellesley Community Center, and the CEO asked him to join the smaller organization.
“At that time, it had one branch with 12 employees and $60 million in assets,” recalled Fontaine. “My loan portfolio at Bank Boston was bigger than the whole bank, but I saw this amazing opportunity,”
He added that the opening appealed to his entrepreneurial side, and he thought he could take what he learned at Bank Boston and apply those strategies at the smaller depository.
“So, I started growing the bank,” he said. “It was more of a savings and loan, but I transformed it into more of a commercial bank. I brought them all the commercial lending expertise, commercial depository services.”
Fontaine joined Wellesley Cooperative Bank in 1999. In 2006, he was promoted to president, and three years later, he became CEO.
In the first 10 years he was at Wellesley, the bank’s assets grew from $60 million to $200 million and opened a second location.
“We were in a very affluent town,” he said. “Even though we were the hometown bank, I think we were in number six or seven in market share. We were still completely irrelevant, frankly.”
Fontaine told his board that for Wellesley to become relevant in its market, it needed to raise capital.
“The only way we could do that, we were (a non-profit) mutual, was to convert the bank to a public company,” he said. “So, in January 2012, we fully converted to a public company. We raised about $22 million from our depositors, and then that gave me the capital to grow the bank.”
“So, we started opening locations and hiring really good people, which I love to do,” he continued, “building out teams, rebuilding the board, and we grew the bank from $250 million in 2012 to just under $1 billion in 2019.”
Wellesley’s board then faced the realization that many other small and regional banks have struggled with since the 1990s. It realized that to get the best return for shareholders, the bank should seek a buyer rather than pursue further profitability, which would take too long.
“They’d been in the stock for eight years,” Fontaine said of the bank’s investors. “They were patient and were happy with the performance, but they were exerting some pressure, and I realized it was probably time to consider a transaction.”
“I’ve always considered myself a very shareholder-friendly executive,” he added. “It’s their money.”
The bank’s leadership negotiated a sale with Cambridge Trust Company, and Wellesley’s shareholders got $125 million in 2020 for their $22 million investment in 2012.
The two banks closed the deal at the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
“We did it completely remote,” recalled Fontaine, “which was just an amazing feat by both companies. Everybody was remote except for the branches, and the only people in the branches were at the drive-ups.”
Fontaine remained with Cambridge for two-and-a-half years. He was already eyeing Florida as a retirement destination when the opportunity at what is now DLP Bank came up.
“I think the stars aligned for me to be able to come here with a great opportunity and also be in a place where I want to be for the rest of my life,” he said.
Growth opportunities
Fontaine said DLP Bank is an exciting opportunity for him with tremendous growth potential. However, the growth opportunities lie outside of the bank’s current markets.
“As you know, there are 5,000 people here in Starke,” he said. “I think there are 3,000 people in Lake Butler. There are limited opportunities for the kind of growth that the shareholder base of DLP Bancshares is expecting.”
The bank president is convinced he can improve customer service and upgrade the banking experience for its Bradford and Union County customers while simultaneously expanding the bank’s footprint, initially with locations in St. Johns and Duval Counties.
. “We will do lending across the country,” he added, “and then I think eventually we’re going to bolt on the wealth management and trust business. That’s down the road.”
Fontaine said that while looking for growth on the other side of the St. Johns River, he and the bank’s leadership will stay focused on Bradford and Union Counties.
. “We’ve been really clear with the community, and I’ll continue to be clear with the community that this community bank is very important to us,” he said. “We want to continue to serve these communities better than they have been served in the past.”
Fontaine said the bank will undergo a major technology update in April.
“We are way behind from a technology standpoint,” he said. “That will help, and I think will present a much better banking experience to the clients here. And it will afford us the ability to grow significantly beyond Bradford and Union Counties.”
“I believe that with technology,” he added, “we can actually give them a better, faster experience, response time, et cetera, that will meet their needs, but also allow us to be more efficient in how we service those needs.”
‘We’re here for you.’
Fontaine has been with the bank for around 90 days, and he said he is grateful for the community welcoming him with open arms.
He added that turmoil, uncertainty, and anxiety come with an ownership change. He said that his primary goal now is to provide stability and to correct some misconceptions that have arisen about the bank.
“I think there’s a fear that because we were bought by DLP Bancshares in St. Augustine, we’re all going to move everything there,” he said. “That’s not what’s going to happen.”
Fontaine also said the bank has had to work through some bad loans it made in the past.
“Those are biting us,” he said. “Those are tough. We’re working them out, and we’ve taken a lot of losses in the past year to try to get some of that behind us.”
The banker added that because of the ownership change and modernization of some of the bank’s practices, some people think the bank has lost sight of its original mission.
“Unfortunately, I think the community now thinks we don’t want to lend to them, and that’s not true,” he said. “We just want to lend to the right people.”
Fontaine said he had just met with a Union County trucking company.
“I would lend to them all day long,” he said. “I’d love to have a thousand of them. Good, honest people who run a nice business.”
Fontaine said the DLP Bank’s new owners have been generous with the bank’s employees and have embraced contributing to the community.
“They’ve been very philanthropic with our own employee base and with the community,” he said. “The Shop-with-a-Cop fundraiser was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes to see these kids who wouldn’t have had a Christmas if it wasn’t for us. That’s why I joined this company.”
Fontaine said that through the ownership change, the working out of previously made bad loans, and the other improvements made to the bank, he wants one message to get out to Bradford and Union Counties residents.
“I’m trying to tell the community, “he said, “we’re here for you.”
