First Business Bank’s new equipment finance president targets stable growth

First Business Bank’s new equipment finance president aims to sustain and stabilize its performance in the equipment finance portfolio as the company navigate recent growth and the transportation sector slowdown.

Kyle Bergeron took over as president of equipment finance at First Business Specialty Finance, the subsidiary of First Business Bank that oversees equipment finance operations, on May 7, according to a First Business Bank news release.

He aims to help sustain the equipment finance division’s growth, he told Equipment Finance News.

“The equipment finance division really took off a couple of years ago when they brought on some new salespeople that really set the world on fire and brought in a tremendous amount of business,” Bergeron said. “With any younger, developing, growing department, there’s going to be some growing pains with that, and my role is to help smooth out those growing pains, and help build the foundation to sustain the growth that the company has already seen.”  

Equipment finance portfolio performance 

First Business Bank’s equipment finance portfolio totaled $294.1 million on March 31, up 28.6% year over year, according to an EFN analysis of the company’s first-quarter earnings presentation released April 26. While growth remains positive, there’s concern about the portfolio’s $57 million, or 19%, exposure to the transportation sector, which continues to show weakness, although Bergeron says the division can overcome it. 

“In a time where many people are struggling because of the turmoil caused by the trucking industry, we’re heavily investing in our equipment finance group,” he said. “We’re also about to launch a brand-new system, both front- and back-end, so the bank has committed to investing into the equipment finance group because it believes in this group and its ability to continue to drive profitability for the bank.” 

The system change is one big goal for the year, but the company also expects to continue to build on those technological systems, Bergeron said. 

“We’re shifting our back-end and front-end systems over to Odessa [Technologies], and so we’re hoping to go live in a few months,” he said. “That’s going to be a tremendous help for us to set up the procedures and the operations to continue that growth. We’re also going to be selective and selectively adding new partners.” 

Setting foundations with experience 

Bergeron has more than 15 years of financial services experience, including his most recent stint as senior vice president of credit strategy and operations at Blue Bridge Financial, which landed him on Monitor’s 40 under 40 years old list for the equipment finance sector.  

“We’re building a solid foundation, especially within the operations so that we can continue to grow and not have it be almost detrimental to us if we grow too fast,” he said. “We had substantial growth over the last few years, and now our focus is on sustainability … and making sure that we put the right people in the right places and get the right systems in place.”