Mortgage Loan Originator Chuck Kinzel retires from North Shore Bank tomorrow.

He may be “retiring,” but don’t say good-bye to Chuck Kinzel just yet.

A mortgage loan originator since 2004, Chuck will end his tenure at North Shore Bank tomorrow, March 7. He is not quite ready to give up working, though, so next week he’ll return to his former career in real estate.

“I expect to be up and running by Monday,” he says. “My wife’s got a couple more years to work, and I need to do something, so this is perfect for me.”

Before he joined the team here, Chuck was a Realtor with Realty Executives for more than 25 years. In the course of helping people buy homes, he built a relationship with North Shore Bank and referred many of those clients to us for their mortgages. He also had his personal mortgages with North Shore Bank.

“Ten years ago, almost to the day, I was having lunch with a North Shore Bank vice president and expressed to him that after so long in real estate, I was feeling a bit burned-out,” Chuck says. The VP — who has since moved on — said he thought Chuck would make a great mortgage loan originator and invited him to come work at the bank. “I laughed it off because I had zero banking experience. But a couple of months later, I was at North Shore.”

A little learning curve
The shift wasn’t drastic, exactly, but as with any career change, there were some things to figure out.

“I was pretty confident until I got into it, and then I said, Oh boy. Because of my real estate experience, I knew the process — or at least I thought I did. But there’s so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes,” Chuck says.

For example, he recalls taking his first loan application.

“At that time, all the LOs worked out of cubes on the fifth floor. My customers had driven in from Burlington after normal work hours. And as I was taking the application, I came to the realization that I did not know what I was doing,” he says. “I didn’t have a clue. Fortunately, another LO was working late several cubes down.”

The other loan originator was happy to help Chuck and the clients. “After completing the application, I had some concerns about the customers’ credit report and whether I should have even taken the app,” Chuck says. “As I was leaving for the night, sometime after 7:30 p.m., I ran into Janice Bertagnolli. I told her of my concerns, and she took the time to review my file and assured me things would be fine.”

Together, achieving more
The help he received from both colleagues, Chuck says, “was a great indication of the cooperative team atmosphere at North Shore Bank.”

That atmosphere has been the norm during Chuck’s decade at NSB. He offers special thanks to recently retired VP Mark Koenig. “I’ve known Mark since the early days of my real estate career. His wise counsel and coaching were a great benefit to my career here.”

And, he says, “I would also like to give a special shout-out to three people who have been an incredible help day in and day out: Janice, Marzena Kroll, and Marta Acosta. Thank you, ladies. I will miss the daily interaction with the great people that make up this organization.”

But we most likely haven’t seen the last of him. He and his wife, Pat, will be busy attending their three grandkids’ many activities and events, and while he waits for her to retire, he’ll stay occupied at Realty Executives. And he hopes to keep directing home buyers to North Shore Bank.

“I was a pretty good Realtor — I did pretty good business — but I think I’m going to be better now, because of my experience with the bank,” Chuck says. “And I’m certainly hopeful that I’ll be sending North Shore business for years to come.”