Managing Director of Asset-Based Lending
CIT
CIT is an established name in the asset-based lending industry, but that hasn’t stopped it from continuing to evolve and innovate. In 2020 alone, the bank expanded its ABL division, hired a new ABL team leader and continued to close deals with its CIT Northbridge Credit joint venture, setting itself up for continued success in the marketplace.
Even before 2020 began, CIT knew this year was going to be an important one for its asset-based lending business.
One of those steps occurred in January when the bank closed on its acquisition of Mutual of Omaha Bank, which gave CIT new footholds in the Omaha, NE; Dallas; Phoenix; and San Diego markets. Just having new markets would mean nothing without an established product line, but CIT was ready with both regional expertise and a broad range of offerings across its commercial finance division, including traditional ABL.
With the ABL unit alone, CIT delivers first-in-last-out facilities, hard assets, intangibles, stretch term loans and more to new customers and current customers alike. With a larger regional footprint to operate in, CIT also expanded its asset-based lending business by leveraging strong and experienced internal talent.
Esposito’s approach required helping relationship managers and underwriters in CIT’s expanded territories learn to better identify opportunities for which the ABL team could offer the best solution. From there, they could deploy these skills with their established customer relationships.
The recent ABL team expansion provides even more capacity, and as Esposito explains, there is plenty of room to grow.
Question Answered
Since joining CIT in 2002 to help with the newly formed retail ABL unit, Esposito has experienced the ups and downs of the industry, building on a nearly 40-year career in banking and commercial lending. During his tenure, Esposito learned that asking questions is a critical part of the process. Perhaps not coincidentally, Esposito got the job he has today by asking a pretty simple one.
“At this point in my career, with 30-something years in asset-based lending and almost 40 years in banking, I was more than ready to step up and take a larger role,” Esposito says. “I saw we would be growing ABL in the future, so I wanted to be part of that.”
Given continued uncertainty with COVID-19, Esposito expects flexibility will be essential in ABL financings given the difficulties of arranging face-to-face meetings with clients and the challenges faced by third-party providers like field examiners. These are hurdles that he and his team must continue to address in this environment to support an increased level of client activity.
Executive Officer
CIT Northbridge Credit
“I think that’s actually a very good extra tool to have,” Esposito says. “While CIT Northbridge and CIT asset-based lending each have independent sales organizations, opportunities are placed with the unit that can provide the best client solution.”
Whether it’s CIT Northbridge, or the expanded ABL unit that Esposito is leading, CIT has put itself in an excellent position to expand across the asset-based lending industry — both in 2020 and the years to come. That was the plan the whole time, after all.*
Editor’s Note: This issue was finalized prior to the Oct. 16 announcement that CIT would merge with First Citizens BancShares. The combined company will operate under the First Citizens name and the merger is expected to close in the first half of 2021.
