Richard ‘Randy’ Anderson has been President and CEO of the National Capitol Bank (NCB) at 316 Pennsylvania Ave. SE for a little more than a year now. He’s a personable man with an easy smile, and no wonder. Business publications report that 2016 was a turnaround year for NCB, and Anderson fully intends to continue the growth in the future.
Sitting behind his desk in his wood-paneled office in the District’s oldest bank, Anderson readily talks about getting to know Capitol Hill, the bank, and all the things he would still love to learn.
“I’ve enjoyed getting to know the whole Hill community,” he said. “I don’t think I realized how much of a community identity the Hill had until you actually work here. And then you really feel it.”
But Anderson knows banks, and he could see the potential in a bank rooted so deeply in the community. He has set out to revitalize the bank and help it grow, both in terms of bank assets and service.
“My job is essentially to take a great institution and do what I can from my forty years of banking to make it better.”
Anderson came to NCB last April after serving as Regional President for Metro DC at United Bank. He describes his professional move as a refreshing change, leaving a corporately owned branch for a family-owned operation that goes back 128 years.
“[NCB] is different for me, because the banks I’ve been involved in as a senior manager in the last 25 years were all publicly held and actively traded, and we had institutional ownership, which tends to create a whole different set of expectations and demands.”
But regardless of the type of ownership, Anderson knows that growth is key to business success and, in the NCB, he saw opportunity.
Shortly after his arrival, Anderson told the Washington Business Journal that the bank needed to ‘staff up.’ He said he would hire a mortgage loan officer and commercial loan officer in his first year to boost the bank’s loan portfolio.
And Anderson did just that. Only three months after Anderson himself came on board, he hired Rene Aldrich as Senior Commercial Lender and, a month later, Christopher Reddick as Residential Mortgage Sales Director. Now, three months into his second year, Andersen has further augmented the NCB’s lending team with two additional hires: Commercial Lender Kathy Speakman and Construction Lending Director Richard Sobonya.
But Andersen still wasn’t done. When reviewing the bank’s potential for growth, he also identified technology and service as areas where he thought it could move forward. So in April the bank announced the hiring of Robin Robertson as Retail Banking Director. Her role is to expand sales and service performance as well as community engagement. Soon after, Paul Yeloushan came on board as Product and Technology Director to help the bank up its tech game.
While the bank’s staff has grown by six, Anderson said that adding that many new faces to the team presented little challenge to the bank’s staff, who considers themselves as much a family as colleagues.
Andersen is confident that the growth in personnel will pay dividends. “I think the community will find that we’re trying to have a higher profile in terms of the NCB brand,” he says.
The bank has, however, made investments beyond personnel.
One of Anderson’s goals in moving the bank forward has been the blending of youthful direction with traditional foundations. That means integrating technology and innovation into the NCB’s services, just as it did in the 1950s, when it offered the first drive-up teller in the District.
In June, Anderson and the team continued that approach by introducing the first NCB banking app. It has been a tremendous success, with nearly 25% of bank customers using it to transact business.
There are some new features and new faces at National Capital Bank and the bank itself is growing. But Anderson points out that banks are like living things. They have to grow, or they quickly decline. There has been a lot of change on the Hill over the last thirty years, he notes. Now the bank, he says, is catching up and growing alongside the community.
“This is where we’re headquartered, and this is where our primary focus is going to be. In the banking business, you have to have a certain level of dynamic growth and opportunity to be a survivor. And the goal here is to be a survivor,” he said.
“We’re the oldest bank in Washington, and the bank has been a steadfast part of the community for the entire time. There’s a lot to be proud of. There aren’t a lot of organizations that can say that.”
