Synovus Financial has a multiyear plan to hire more bankers in certain Southeast metropolitan areas — pitting the Columbus, Georgia-based company in a battle for talent with other banks that are expanding on its home turf.
Starting next year, Synovus aims to hire approximately 85 relationship managers over three years, including 35 in 2025, in markets such as Atlanta; Miami, Orlando and Tampa; Birmingham, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; and Columbia, South Carolina.
In total, Synovus plans to grow the number of bankers in its commercial, middle-market and private wealth businesses by 20% to 30% between now and 2027, Chairman and CEO Kevin Blair said in an interview Monday.
The hiring plan comes after the $59.9 billion-asset Synovus has spent years building out other lines of business, including specialty verticals, and hiring bankers to service those divisions.
But "we're now at a point where portfolios are full" in commercial and middle-market lending and private wealth, "and if we want to grow, we need to add more community bankers," Blair said.
But doing so in the highly competitive market that is the Southeast comes with some challenges.
"The biggest risk is not being able to hire the bankers," Blair told American Banker. "We know what good looks like, and we can see in their books of business what they'll bring to the table. It's just being able to compete with other banks that in some situations may have larger checkbooks."
Across the five Southeastern states where Synovus operates, it goes head to head with some of the largest banks in the nation — for example, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Truist Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina. Plenty of other banks are trying to grab their share of the pie in that part of the country, including
As such, Synovus may find that it will have to pay more to lure the bankers it wants to recruit, said Jared Shaw, an analyst at Barclays who has covered the regional bank for 11 years.
"They're not the only ones out there looking for really qualified bankers, so it could get a little more expensive if they're talking to someone that's being looked at by other banks," Shaw said.
Synovus may also encounter challenges in capturing more clients, Shaw added.
"The other part is that you hope [new hires] will bring their clients over, but it takes two to three years to really harvest all of those relationships and over that period, the existing bank could really dig in and try to retain those customers," he said.
Synovus revealed its hiring plans last month at an industry conference and gave more details last week. The plan is to hire in stages — in addition to about 35 people next year, the company expects to bring on another 35 in 2026 and 15 to 20 in 2027, Blair said.
Staggered hiring should spread out the added headcount costs to roughly $10 million per year, Blair said. It should also shorten the payback period, as the bankers hired in the first year will begin to generate enough revenue to cover their costs by the time the bank is in the third year of its hiring plan.
By that third year, Synovus expects the new bankers to add about $1 billion of new loans and $500 million of new deposits, Blair said. By 2030, those numbers should be about $3 billion of new loans and $2 billion of new deposits, he said.
The company is actively talking to potential new hires, with the hope of pulling them onboard early in the new year, Blair said. The focus is on luring teams of commercial and middle-market lenders and private wealth bankers who may be looking for a change away from larger banks, he said.
"We put this out there, and some people are saying, 'Why are you telling your competitors that you're doing this?'" Blair said. "But we feel like we've already planted the seeds. We're already working on this."
