TD Bank announced in July that Hugh Allen will serve as the new regional president of the mid-south, which includes Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware, North Carolina and South Carolina. Allen served as TD Bank commercial real estate division head – South and has 30 years of banking experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas and a Master’s of Business Administration from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
How did you get into banking?
After graduating from school, I started my banking career with a large regional bank based in Pittsburgh and went through their management training program. That was a two-year stint in Pittsburgh — for somebody from Houston, that can be interesting when you are a Houston Oilers fan, which is what I was in the ’80s. It was a great experience. My introduction to banking was going through a management training program and eventually becoming a real estate lender.
How has it been shifting from commercial real estate to now being the regional head at TD Bank?
It’s been tremendous. Obviously, the responsibility is expanded to our branch network from Delaware to South Carolina, and our commercial, small business and middle-market lending activities, as well as providing leadership for all of our employees and team members in that footprint. I’ve been out as much as possible — COVID-permitting — to interface with our leadership and interface with our managers on the retail branch network side, as well as our commercial and middle-market lenders to A: get to know them, and more importantly, let them get to know me and B: hear how things are going in the market.
What are your responsibilities as TD Bank’s regional president of the Mid-South?
I primarily provide leadership and am the primary banner waiver for TD Bank in that geography and I make sure all of our lines of business are coordinated. Directly, my responsibilities are going to be for our retail branch network, our commercial lending, our middle market lending and small business lending efforts in that same geography. I’ve got direct responsibility and then I’ve got indirect responsibility to make sure that TD puts its best foot forward in every way.
What are your goals in the position?
We have tremendous opportunities in our markets, specifically in the Upstate with all the growth in Greenville and Spartanburg. I want to make sure I’m doing whatever I can to remove obstacles for our folks, promote our brand and engage in our communities.
How do you envision TD Bank’s work with the Upstate community?
I think we’re going to get some recognition for some of the philanthropy we’ve done and the engagement we’ve done in the Greenville market. We have a lot of our team members who are on boards for nonprofits. David Lominack, who is our market president in Greenville, does a phenomenal job of providing leadership for board engagement and community engagement in the Greenville market. TD Bank is also very engaged with trying to support a lot of nonprofits through the TD Charitable Foundation. And we are also very engaged with the investment in low-income housing, tax credit, and the financing of affordable housing through both our institutional commercial real estate platform as well as through our commercial lending platforms.
What else should people know about you and TD Bank?
We really, really want to help facilitate growth and opportunity for our clients and for our communities. We want to be a vehicle to help facilitate both of those things. We are very focused on financial security for individuals in our communities — and we want to be that that place that they can come to. We really want to help our regions to continue to experience the wonderful growth that they’ve had here in the Carolinas.
Source: upstatebusinessjournal.com
