Change is nothing new at Dime Community Bank, which opened its doors in 1864 while Abraham Lincoln was still president of the United States and 19 years before the Brooklyn Bridge was completed.
In 2019, Dime changed its charter from a savings bank to a commercial bank, allowing them to serve municipalities as well as opening other opportunities. In 2021, it merged with BNB, moving the headquarters from Brooklyn to Hauppauge.
“Dime had a presence in Brooklyn and Queens and BNB had Nassau and Suffolk,” Stuart Lubow, the bank’s new CEO, said. “There are a number of areas where it made sense to join together and make a $12.5 billion company.”
When Lubow took the role of CEO of Dime Community Bank on September 1, it was a smooth transition. But then, he already had been president and chief operating officer. In a 40-year banking career, Lubow had been at the helm of financial institutions based in New York as well as New Jersey, launching, growing, and steering banks for decades.
“I’ve been CEO at various banks for over 20 years,” Lubow said. “I went to Dime to transform it from a thrift that basically did multifamily lending to a more commercial relationship-based bank.”
He ran Garden State Bank in New Jersey from 1992 to 1997 and then launched Community State Bank in Bergen County, New Jersey, in 1997, where he was president and CEO. In 2005 he launched and became chairman and CEO of Great Neck-based Community National Bank, which he grew to 15 branches and $1 billion in assets and sold to BNB in 2015. That led to his role of president of Dime, which he said prepared him for the CEO title.
““Most of the organization did already report to me and I’m focusing on continuing our original plan, and our strategic growth,” he said.
Lubow leads Dime after numerous changes, including where it’s based and its type of charter. And the bank continues to grow, fueled in part by some other banks’ problems that translated into Dime’s opportunities.
“Because of our strength, we haven’t just played defense. We played offense as well,” he said of Dime’s ability to hire former employees at banks that faced financial trouble. “We were able to take advantage of the situation and bring on new teams. They have brought in substantial sums of money in terms of new deposits.”
Dime brought in seven banking teams from Signature and First Republic National, which both went under. “We’ve been active in the lending business,” he said. “We’ve grown deposits and loans during this interesting time in the economy. We’re quite happy with our positioning.”
He said they have grown the bank since the merger from about $12.5 billion to nearly $14 billion in assets. “And we continue to grow based on relationship banking across deposits and lending,” Lubow said. “During these turbulent times, we continue to see growth across these areas.”
Dime several months ago hired a new head of healthcare lending from Valley National Bank and is continuing to hire.
They also rolled out new services, including escrow account management software for property managers, lawyers, and title companies. “This is a brand-new product that allows the customer to open new accounts for their customers and manage the process,” Lubow said. “We do the back-end work, providing 1099s.”
And they rolled out their retail digital account opening process, so customers can open CDs and checking accounts online, and the bank is gearing up to roll that out for commercial customers.
The Federal Reserve rated Dime as “outstanding” for its community reinvestment program, another sign of a strong bank connected to the community.
Dime has more than 60 locations from Montauk to Manhattan including branches in Nassau and Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, one in Manhattan, and as of June, one in Staten Island.
And Dime is continuing to grow customers, assets and employees as it seeks to position itself as offering the best of both worlds, personalized service and the infrastructure of a bigger financial institution.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to provide the customer service our clients deserve,” Lubow said of what he hopes will be continued growth for the Long Island-based bank that also has a large office near Grand Central. “They have access to decision makers.” It is currently looking at opening new branches, including in Nassau and Manhattan.
