In a nearly three decade career with first M&I Bank and then BMO, Jud Snyder has gone from being a credit analyst to roles in sales to leading equipment finance teams and now to leading wealth management work. BMO’s recent acquisition of Bank of the West expanded Snyder’s portfolio, taking him from leading three states as a regional president at BMO Wealth Management to now covering 10 states across the Midwest. BizTimes managing editor Arthur Thomas chatted with Snyder recently about what it's been like to work in banking as the sector has gone through chaos following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and others, taking on a growing role at BMO and how he’s navigated various career decisions along the way.
BizTimes: What have the past few weeks been like in the banking sector?
Snyder: “For all of us in banking, the last few weeks have been ... it's been a great time to reconnect with our clients and that may sound a little bit odd when you say, boy, it's been a volatile or turbulent time, but it’s been a great time to reconnect, reassure people. Banking, in many ways, is a pretty simple business and it's about trust. So, the last few weeks have been a chance for us to have a lot of conversations around for us, we're a 206-year-old organization, a trillion dollars in assets, one of the largest banks in the U.S. and North America and it’s been a time to reassure people not just the safety and soundness of our organization, but of the U.S. banking system. Those have been really important conversations over the last couple of weeks and ones candidly we hadn't really had in the last decade. We've had this period of relative stability and lower interest rates, and it hasn't been as chaotic. We've had in many ways a very, very long stable and positive growth economy in the U.S. and in general, the type of 10 or 15 year run we've had, that hasn’t been the historical average, usually we go through cycles, but we've had a really nice, long growth period in our country and these are conversations that as bankers we do have with our clients as we go through turbulent times, we just haven't had them over the last decade.”
Your role has changed and grown with the completion of the Bank of the West deal, how has it changed?
“I have a few roles for the bank, I'm a regional president for BMO Wealth Management, and in that capacity I lead our various wealth practices. Prior to Bank of the West, I led them across what was called the northern states, so that was Minnesota, Wisconsin and we had expanded to build out a practice in Colorado. As we began to plan towards Bank of the West, we reorganized our regions to make sure we were most effectively led and my mandate broadened. So as we built towards that, I picked up kind of the center of the country. We now call the region the Midwest and it encompasses from Minnesota, across through the Dakotas, down through Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas City and Indiana. The only exception is Illinois ... we have a separate regional president just for Illinois, but I have the rest of those 10 states and so pre-Bank of the West, that meant picking up our people in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and now with the closure of the acquisition of Bank of the West, we welcomed additional colleagues in Kansas City, also in Omaha, Wichita, Fargo, North Dakota, kind of filling in much of the western side of that Midwestern region.”
How is it different going from managing across a three-state region to a 10-state region, leading BMO teams and new teams from another bank, how do you go through leading all that change and that growth in your portfolio?
“The honest answer is you just get excited about it. The opportunity to grow and lead a larger team and also to bring people together in the ways that you do following an acquisition and through a merger like this is one of those exciting times in leadership. I benefit from my experience in going through the M&I and BMO transaction. My career started with M&I, so I've been here almost 30 years, so I saw some of the things that honestly I feel proud of and I think we did really well in working to bring M&I and BMO together, remaining engaged in the community, remaining focused on our clients and being really intentional about the way our new employees felt as they came into the organization. It's a similar playbook today. We have really great people and we have really great connections to our community. If we stay focused on that, a lot of good things happen.”
You're leading wealth management now. You have a background leading some of the equipment finance businesses. What's the difference in those two lines of business and how is it different leading wealth management versus equipment finance?
“Yeah, I would say at first blush not everyone looks at a long career in commercial banking and says 'gosh, that's a natural to go move over into our wealth practice.' It's not as unlikely as it seems. In my career in the commercial side of the bank and predominantly in equipment finance, I worked closely with family-owned and private companies and my teams did, so as you think about what that looks like, you're planning, you're advising, you're building relationships and you're helping people with their businesses achieve their goals. A lot of the time you're forming pretty close and intimate relationships with those owners because this is their livelihood. If you think about that transition to wealth and what we do when we do wealth well, it's that same idea. It's helping families think through their goals, it's helping them find peace related to financial plans and generational plans and so for me this transition has been, seamless is too strong a word, but it's been one I've really embraced because the things I love about my job are watching our people help our clients find peace and think through what happens next and make the complicated less scary and less complicated. It was the same on the commercial side as it is on the wealth side for that, it's the part of the job I really enjoy.”
We talked about banking over the past few weeks, but if we back up and look over the past two years when you throw in inflation and you throw in rising interest rates, how does all that make your day-to-day easier, harder or more difficult? How does that shape things for you?
“The best way I can describe it is I think this time in the cycle, and it’s not just the Silicon Valley Bank period over the last couple weeks, as you well put, it's the last couple of years, this is the time in the cycle when people begin to reevaluate and recognize again why having a professional advisor and working with them on the wealth side is so important. If you reflect back even three, four years ago, interest rates were very low, so there wasn't a time value of money component, it's why tech companies did so well. If there’s no future value of money, you don't care whether earnings come in one year or five years, well fast forward, as rates rise, those companies' future earnings become a little less valuable and it becomes more complicated to think about an investing strategy. An investing strategy also changes as interest rates rise and all the sudden fixed income is one potential arrow in your quiver again. The last couple years I think have, for all of us in banking, have proven out the thesis that there’s a value in what we provide. There is an opportunity for us to serve and help people think through things and in an economy that's changing the way it is, people once again realize having a professional help me out with that isn't the worst thing, it’s not just go to Robinhood and pick a few stocks, it’s really a time to get professional about it.”
That Robinhood period was so divorced from any underlying fundamentals of what the companies were or where things were at, it became a game practically versus a thought-out strategy to set you up for life.
“I think that's well said. The way we think about it, when we work with our clients we try to build a financial plan for them and planning is a big part of what we do, so we try to sit down with them because everyone's different, everyone thinks about both their goals and their family's goals differently. So when you build a plan, you're not building it to take advantage of the most recent opportunity or something that's a flash, we've been, as I said, on a really good 10 to 15 year run and throughout the last few years of that prior to interest rates rising, it was kind of the last strong incline of that strong economy, but a plan is built for decades and when you execute on a plan you're consistent about a plan, whether it’s a business plan or a family's plan, you don't necessarily follow the hot item of the day. You set it out and then you're less impacted by turbulence like we've seen over the last month or by really hot markets like you might see in a period, it's a long-term vision of where you want your family to be.”
You mentioned reconnecting with customers, what are some of things that make up your typical day?
“If I'm really lucky, I get to see clients. That's always the best parts of my day and I think it's one of the real benefits and challenges of leadership is that if you're not intentional about seeing clients your days get so busy you don't always get to do it. For me, a typical day I might get to pop into one or two client meetings to say ‘hi,’ to see how we're doing and to get a pulse on that. Much of the rest of my day is looking at strategy as we're thinking about how we're bringing both Bank of the West business and BMO business together, looking out to the next three, six, nine, 12 months and where we think our clients' opportunities are and what they want to do, and then there's just the day-to-day things that come in, there are plenty of meetings for all of us. For me personally, I try really hard to make sure those meetings are in-person. Like every organization, we have a culture that is hybrid, both virtual and in-person, but I find both with our clients and with our teams, the times when we're able to be together, in-person, those are the times I think we're most effective and most connected.”
There's a lot to be said for that ability to have everyone in a room and you're not dealing with microphone issues, you're not dealing with dogs barking, things like that. When you're in the office, it’s easy to stick around and stand in someone's doorway and chat with them because I actually get to see you and I get to have a conversation now versus being on a Teams call just trying to get the agenda checked off.
“I think that interpersonal connection, I literally was just in a meeting talking about this. That interpersonal connection is critical not just to our businesses, but to us as people, people are social animals. So I agree with you there's a really important aspect to that when we're able to do it.”
From a leader perspective, I'm not sure what BMO has policy-wise as far as people being in or out of the office, is it just a matter of the carrot of showing and demonstrating that value to people to encourage them to be in versus a ‘you're going to be at your desk so we can have this in-person meeting,’ which actually maybe taints the water of the benefit of that interpersonal communication?
“Yeah, I think if you asked 10 leaders today you'd get 10 different answers on how best to approach that. At BMO our practice has been that we feel we're better together, we're not at a point where we're going to mandate people's return to the office in the way that some firms have, I think we're more of a carrot organization, helping people see the value in being together, trying to find ways to be together that maybe are a little bit different than they were in the past, but still recognize that we're better for our clients in-person, we're better for each other in-person, and there's absolutely a cultural and kind of wellness benefit to doing that. So we don't have a stated policy and at the same time we've begun to see more and more people returning just because, as you said, they want to be together.”
Backing way up, you studied Russian and economics in college, planned to go into the foreign service, what had you thinking you wanted to go down that path for a career?
“I had always loved languages. I went to a Minneapolis public school high school but one that had a focus in languages. I studied Russian and Chinese in high school and went to UW-Madison with the idea that it would be neat to work in the foreign service. Russia was in the midst of really profound change. I'm old, so this was late '80s, early '90s and glasnost and perestroika were taking over and Russia was opening. I thought it was a really neat opportunity to be involved in global change. By the time I got out of college, Russia was no longer in optimistic change, it was a pretty tough place, so I graduated in '94 and took a look around, had an economics degree as well as a Russian degree and M&I Bank was good enough to give me a chance and teach me credit and that was my entry into banking. I thought it would be short-term, it has been anything but.”
Once you saw your life taking that different direction, you had this career developing, how did you go about growing and developing your skillsets to eventually be able to move into leadership positions? Was that a very intentional thing or how did you set about that?
“I would say early in my career it was not intentional. I've always loved and always been involved in team sports and I've always loved that aspect of followership and leadership in that capacity. Early in my career though, no, I just wanted to learn. I was really fortunate to have really good mentors and leaders within the bank to teach me some of the fundamentals of banking and credit and sales. It was probably 10 years into my career before I had an opportunity to move into management and really begin to think about leadership at that point.”
Fast forward to now, you're on a variety of different boards, how do you approach taking on additional roles internally or externally with a nonprofit or things like that?
“It becomes harder every day for all of us. We're all pulled in so many different directions. For me personally, our Milwaukee community especially is so important to me. I've seen a lot of change in this community over the last 25 years and I'm really excited about where the community is going. For me, the leadership opportunities outside the bank are the ones where I see us having a potential to make positive and sustainable community change, it's one of the reasons I'm so involved with the United Way and with Boys & Girls Club and now over the last few years with Froedtert Health. I think population health, income stability and education are just critical for Milwaukee and those are the areas that really draw my time these days.”
