Meet Teller Lisa Richetelli (if You Haven’t Already)

By Jorge Santiago

“I go out of my way to take care of who’s in front of me. I love all of our customers.”

So says teller Lisa Richetelli, a familiar face at our Broad Street branch for the last 14 years. While many of our customers certainly know Lisa, some might not know that she’s married to another well-known local: Her husband James served as Milford’s ninth mayor from 2001 to 2011. Both spouses revel in their Milford citizenry and were happy to raise their children here among friends, while enjoying the town’s many amenities, like the beautiful seashore.

Lisa finds job satisfaction at The Milford Bank even in everyday simple efforts to assist customers. For example, she described a recent experience helping an elderly woman learn how to operate the bank’s ATM machine. “By the time she left, she was in great spirits,” Lisa recounted. For her, it’s important that every customer who comes through the door has a good banking experience.

After Lisa graduated high school, she worked at The Milford Bank for about a decade before leaving to raise her three children. She returned to her “home away from home” fourteen years ago in a part-time capacity, saying that she couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. “It’s a hometown bank, so people will talk about what’s going on,” she said. “Most of us live in Milford or are from around here, so the bank has a really community-oriented feel.”

Lisa said she looks forward to seeing whoever walks up to her counter. Even though there are customers she knows better than others, she tries to treat everyone the same. “We know most of our customers,” Lisa explained, “and we make it a point to get to know the customers we don’t know.”

The Milford Bank strives to hire tellers who will be courteous, friendly and helpful at all times, and Lisa perfectly embodies those characteristics.

Please stop by our Broad Street branch and say hello!

You Love Local Businesses. We’ll Help You Love Them More!

By Lynn Viesti Berube

The whole community benefits when you spend your money locally. We at The Milford Bank understand that perfectly, which is why we’re pleased to work with our business customers to make special offers available from them to the rest of our customers.

We started this program several years ago with coupons accessible on our ATMs. While we can no longer offer them at our ATMs (the software which enabled us to add coupon screens is no longer available) our customers can still find these valuable offers on our website, in our eNewsletter and in the customer newsletters mailed with their monthly paper statements.

Every quarter, working in conjunction with our business customers, we offer different coupons supporting local businesses—anything from restaurants to boutiques to flower shops and everything in between. We’re always looking for ways to help our customers save money. Our local coupon program is just one extension of that philosophy. Plus, it helps our business customers too.

Milford and Stratford are wonderful communities full of strong businesses run by great people. That’s why we’re pleased to call the two towns our home. In order to keep our communities in as good a shape as they’re in, it’s important that we support local businesses whenever possible. These coupons will help bring prices down, so please consider taking advantage of them.

Who doesn’t like to save money? We know we do. By making use of our local coupon program, it is our hope that our customers will help support local businesses without feeling like they are breaking the bank.

School Is Back in Session, So It’s Time to Get Involved With Cent$ible Kid$

by Jorge Santiago

It’s never too early to teach your kids the importance of saving their money. But, in fact, many children get to high school lacking the financial acumen necessary to navigate the next chapters in their lives.

Understanding this, The Milford Bank launched the Cent$ible Kid$ program in 2008. We envisioned that the program would help young kids realize the importance of saving their money. To help engrain that message, we visit students in Milford and Stratford elementary schools and show them  how to open a savings account—it’s like a piggy bank, but secure and more measurable.

“We think it’s important to teach kids to regularly save their money for a worthwhile purpose, like something special they want, rather than just asking [their parents] for it,” explains Bob Russo, Vice President and Manager of our Broad Street office. “It’s about choices: They have to decide how to spend their money. We believe it promotes good behavior.”

Whether the students deposit 10 cents or $20 a week doesn’t matter to us. Rather, we’re more interested in encouraging the thrifty behavior. And that’s why we give each child a $1 bonus after making five deposits. After making eight deposits, we give them a $1 gold coin, too.

Right now, there are over 500 kids in the program, according to Russo.

In addition to encouraging the youth to open savings accounts, we also educate them on a variety of bank-related topics including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the U.S. Mint, interest rates and more.

Since school is back in session, now is the perfect time to teach your kids about the importance of saving their money. We believe that Cent$ible Kid$ is a program that will help do that.