Dime Community Bank, better known to many just as Dime, is coming to Westchester. The bank plans to open a location at 55 Church St. in White Plains about the middle or latter part of May, which could be the prelude to additional offices being opened in the county.
The bank is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dime Community Bancshares, Inc., and is headquartered in Hauppauge on Long Island. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), it had 61 locations in New York and 851 employees as of the end of 2023. The FDIC said its total assets were $13.6 billion.
Stuart Lubow, Dime’s president and CEO, told the Business Journal, “We’ve been looking at moving into Westchester over the last several years. We think it’s a great place to be, a tremendous opportunity for a community commercial bank. We were able to bring on a Westchester-based team from the former Signature Bank and we’re going to open offices in White Plains and make it our starting point in Westchester.”
The Dime Community Bank was founded in 1864 in Brooklyn and originally was named Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburg,
“We’ve gone through world wars and pandemics and financial crises and Dime has stood tall and survived and grown stronger,” Lubow said. “We just think Westchester is a natural migration and the next opportunity. Our strength, our history, our ability to be nimble and customer-centric puts us above where the competition is. We’ve really spent a lot of time in upgrading and making our technology state-of-the-art, second to none, and what we found is that it accrues to the benefit of the customers and the bank. We probably have the best customer-facing technology in the market today.”
Lubow said that the bank is very competitive in terms of fees and the bank believes in the importance of relationships with customers.
“What’s the differentiator? All banks have checking accounts. What’s different is our technology, our people and the level of service that we provide and the access to local management and senior management. If there’s a need, people can get me on the phone,” Lubow said. “We can act quickly, we can be nimble, we can be more flexible.”
Dime’s CFO Avi Reddy told the Business Journal, “What we’ve built the bank around is being very conservative in our lending philosophy. Back in the 2008 cycle, Dime’s net charge-offs were probably one-fifth of what the regional bank index was. People view us as being a very safe bank.”
As the Federal Reserve Bank tells it, in 2007 losses by banks on mortgage-related financial assets began to cause strains in global financial markets. In the fall of 2008, the economic contraction worsened, ultimately becoming deep enough and protracted enough to acquire the label “the Great Recession.”
Reddy said that while some other banks recently have been cutting back, Dime has been growing its financial footprint.
“These days customers are focused on the quality of the bank in terms of the financials. We screen very well from a capital and asset quality perspective for them,” Reddy said. “If you look at our deposit market share in greater Long Island we’re basically number one. We’re going to be the local New York-based bank that can service everybody and build a top-tier market share.”
Reddy pointed out they have hired for the new Westchester location Michael Maloney, who used to be the chief banking officer at Hudson Valley Bank and is well-versed in the Westchester market.
“We think there are some great towns in Westchester and we have looked at some locations that make sense for us,” Lubow said. “Over time we’ll look to expand.”
