Sterling National Bank, the principal banking subsidiary of Sterling Bancorp, announced the appointment of Carol Apicella as vice president and business development officer.

Apicella will be responsible for new business initiatives aimed primarily at providing financing for government contractors who place temporary and contract workers. She will be concentrating on serving business located in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

“Carol is recognized in the local area as a well-respected commercial lending professional with over 30 years experience – primarily with clients in need of asset-based loans. We are pleased to have Carol on board with us; her background is ideally suited to help us introduce this type of specialty financing, more commonly referred to as payroll funding, to Washington D.C. area companies.” remarked Howard Applebaum, EVP at Sterling.

Apicella explained, “Essentially, we provide financing to cover a company’s weekly payroll, thus alleviating cash flow issues that can arise simply because invoicing is normally done on a monthly basis. This kind of financing is widely used within the temporary staffing industry at-large and we are now seeing this kind of arrangement being sought after by government contractors who send workers to staff positions with U.S., state and local government agencies.”

Sterling’s software platform provides tangible time-saving benefits when it comes to managing workers and generating payroll; the company also is fluent in working with U.S. government portals, has Level 3 credit card processing as well as the ability to remitting tax payments to taxing authorities in all 50 states. Apicella noted, “Not only can Sterling provide the financing, but we provide the critical back office support that can bog down our clients and interfere with them matching workers to open jobs. And that’s something they really can appreciate.”

Prior to joining Sterling National Bank, Apicella has held positions at large finance companies and national banks focused on working with commercial, government contractors and staffing clients.