NEED MONEY? JUST ASK

ANDERSON GREENE!

By Frederick A. Hurst

He was musing about the security he no longer enjoyed as an employee. As a self-employed, small businessman myself, I related to his angst. It is one thing to be able to depend upon someone else for your paycheck but quite another to live with the daily realization that your paycheck will rise or fall according to your own diligence or lack thereof.

Anderson Greene started out working for the bought out Springfield Institution for Savings as a trainee teller. He had walked in off the street and was hired on the spot. The interviewer saw something in him and Anderson did not disappoint. He was soon training other new employees and quickly moved up to teller supervisor. It wasn’t long before he was managing a branch and supervising operations, new accounts and small loan setups.

The pay came in handy. It was 1984 and Anderson moved to Springfield from Boston to be near his future wife. He was enrolled in American International College. He had taken time off from school to be with his sick father but he returned to AIC as a full-time night student and graduated with a degree in finance.

Anderson wasn’t raised in a pristine environment. He had spent the six years before college in a home for boys after being taken from his parents following an agency determination that he was living in a dysfunctional environment.

Sports probably gave Anderson the strength of character to survive. He played basketball, football and ran track as a youngster and was very good at all three, which, he believes, explains why he always moves forward with a winner’s determination.

In pursuit of a broad range of banking experience, Anderson worked for a year and a half in the accounting department of the now defunct Bank of New England and, after graduating from AIC, he took a job at Boston Financial and Equity as a credit analyst trainee as a preliminary to becoming a junior commercial loan officer.

But after a year and a half, an opportunity of a lifetime arose. He was offered and accepted a bank examiners position with the Massachusetts Commissioner of Banks, the state unit responsible for regulating the financial soundness of banks. He specialized in Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) issues, which made him responsible for examining local banks’ compliance with discrimination matters. He spent six years working with many local lenders and made many valuable contacts.

In 1996, he met Mark Strange of United Cooperative Bank (now United Bank), who challenged him to put his money where his mouth was and take a job at United Bank as its community loan officer. Anderson accepted the challenge and worked at United Bank as one of its first minority officers until 2002 when he accepted a loan officer position at Charter Bank.

Now, after three and one half years at Charter, capping off more than 20 years as a banking employee with all the security that it implies, Anderson Greene is taking the giant step of working for himself as an independent agent of Reliant Mortgage Company, L.L.C. where he assumed the title of “Vice President and Regional Manager for the Western Mass Region.”

Anderson “will be responsible for loan production and recruiting initiatives for Hampden and Hampshire counties as well as establishing markets in Northern (Connecticut) extending from Hartford,” according to an announcement released by Reliant. According to Anderson, he has seen enough “predatory lending” victims to know that there is a wide open market for a mortgage broker who is committed to meeting the “situational” lending needs of those who may not qualify for traditional loans, and his new role positions him to perform for that market.

Anderson, a religious man who expects to enter the ministry one day, has set up an office in East Longmeadow. He intends to take a “holistic” approach with potential borrowers. “Lending has changed,” Anderson said. “It is no longer cut and dry. Nine out of ten times, a borrower can be accommodated. The key is to start with someone you can trust.”

Anderson Greene wants to be that someone you can trust. Besides having a wealth of lending experience, he is licensed in all six New England states, as well as in California, Georgia and Florida. He can offer the borrower a range of loans from conventional to nonconforming. His goal is to guide the borrower through the most cost-effective approach to meeting her/his needs, relying on a variety of loan products and on his 20 years of experience in mortgage loan originations, compliance examinations and retail banking.

And Anderson works hard at it. Twelve to fourteen-hour days are typical. He is in the office by seven, and he works on weekends when he is not spending time with his son and two daughters, who are involved in sports at Sabis charter school.

Anderson Greene has taken the entrepreneurial leap into self-employment. Like all of us who have assumed the risks, he has moments of trepidation and occasionally feels the butterflies fluttering in his stomach. But he is a professional. His tenacity, integrity and solid background of experience, combined with a genuine commitment to providing quality lending services, will carry him through because excellence always rises to the top. n