New Leaders You Should Know: David Finnerty

While some have linear career paths, David Finnerty says his is more akin to a spaghetti chart.  Long before taking the reins at Claremont Savings Bank, Finnerty attended Norwich University with the dream of serving as a full-time officer in the United States Marine Corps. Around graduation, however, the first Desert Storm was winding down and slots were few. But Finnerty had planned ahead.

“I had enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve my junior year and went to Paris Island between my junior and senior year,” he says. Finnerty served in the Marine Corps and National Guard as a reservist and was deployed twice to the Philippines and Japan in 2001, and for 13 months in Afghanistan in 2009 with the Connecticut National Guard.

Finnerty, a New Yorker who had studied elementary education, searched for teaching jobs in Vermont and NH but found himself in Connecticut doing odd jobs, bartending and roofing, “Basically taking whatever would come along,” he says.

“And growing up, you always say you’ll never do what one of your parents did,” Finnerty says, adding his father was a banker. “At some point I was looking for a more stable line of work, and I figured I might as well go to a bank. I soon found a part-time job at People’s Bank in Connecticut.”

Over the next 17 years, Finnerty learned everything he could in the financial services industry, from database analytics, to marketing, risk, operations and human resources. Following his return from Afghanistan, Finnerty began running the bank’s operations for its banking and credit card departments. He did that for five years, learning “the ins and outs of a multinational corporation,” he says. But the commute between New Jersey and Connecticut was long and he missed his family.

He landed a position closer to home at a community bank. “I fell in love with [community banking] there,” he says. That connection to community is what attracted him to Claremont Savings Bank last July following the departure of CEO Reggie Greene. Finnerty says he loves mutual banks because of the benefits they provide the community. “The bank thrives when the community thrives,” he says. “We just created a new philanthropy committee that’s going into place this coming year. I think there is a lot of opportunity in Claremont.”

Finnerty has an apartment in Claremont where he stays during the week and a home in Chester, Conn., where his wife Kristina lives and works. The pair, who have been looking forward to moving to New England since their two children graduated high school, also have land in Chester, Vt. that they bought for retirement several years ago. “Now we’re thinking, wow, we can realize that dream a lot sooner.”