By Stephen Stirling
Flushing Savings Bank was named the top thrift institution for 2008 in the annual ranking of the 100 largest thrifts compiled by SNL Financial, and CEO John Buran said the bank’s unwavering community focus is what allowed it to achieve such a distinction.
“We do our lending right in the backyard of our business. We’re not lending in Asia, the Middle East or Latin America,” Buran said. “The money that we lend goes back into the community. So while some banks and other lending institutions have cut back, we’ve found that our approach has been a source of gaining business in the community.”
SNL Financial compiles its top 100 list annually, and Buran said Flushing Savings has been ascending on the list for the last several years.
Thriving as a small operation in a city filled with faltering giants, Flushing Savings Bank is somewhat of an anomaly.
Banking news in the United States during the last year has been far from favorable. The last eight months has seen banking and lending giants like Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual or Citi Group take on record losses and even collapse.
But Buran said though Flushing Savings Bank may fly under the radar, taking a simple, community−based approach to banking is what has allowed it to prosper in an otherwise dismal market.
“We’re a community bank, so we didn’t get involved in a lot of the exotic types of lending or balance sheet structuring that has been the demise of other things in the industry,” Buran said. “We kind of stick to very, very basic banking and we stay close to our lenders and that has allowed us to grow.”
Buran said advances in technology, like the Internet, have made it possible for smaller banks to compete and offer the same services as larger banks, something that was not possible five years ago.
“This has vastly improved over, say, the last few years,” he said. “So companies who might have thought, ‘Oh, I can’t deal with a smaller bank,’ well, they should take another look at Flushing Savings Bank.”
Buran said above all, however, the intimate personal relationship a smaller bank is able to forge with its customers is what sets it apart.
“We offer closeness to the customer that is just not possible in large institutions,” he said. “We make sure we really understand what our customers’ needs are and then we try to craft lending structures that allow them to accomplish what they want.”
Flushing Savings Bank operates 11 branches in Queens and Nassau County. For more information, visit its Web site at flushingsavings.com.
Reach reporter Stephen Stirling by e−mail at sstirling@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 138.
