On Feb. 20, the Business Department of Elizabethtown College held one of their weekly M&M Mars Lecture series of speeches, this time featuring E. Philip Wenger, the CEO, President and Chairman of the Fulton Financial Corporation.
Wenger initially joined the Fulton Financial Corporation in 1979 in an entry-level job before being promoted to Vice President of Corporate Banking 17 years later. Then, on Jan. 1, 2013, he was promoted to his current position. Wenger has a B.S. in finance from Pennsylvania State University’s Harrisburg campus.
The presentation Wenger gave was called “Fulton Financial Corporation: Creating Value for Our Constituencies.” He began the presentation by telling the audience a bit about the 17 billion dollar corporation for which he works. “We at Fulton Financial Corporation hire many Elizabethtown graduates for our management training program every year,” Wenger said. After speaking more about how Fulton is the number one market share position in central Pennsylvania, Wenger went on to explain what constituencies were and why they apply to everyone attending the speech.
Constituencies, according to Wenger, are “groups that support the bank in different ways.” Fulton’s constituencies consist of employees, customers, shareholders, communities and regulators. Wenger said that all these constituencies cause each other’s success when one is successful. “Satisfied and successful employees,” he said, “create satisfied and successful customers, who can become satisfied and successful shareholders, which can form communities of satisfied and successful people.” The final constituency that Wenger listed, however, was not part of the equation until the recession in 2008 when banks were required to list their regulators as constituencies as a safety precaution.
Along with explaining what constituencies were, Wenger also told attendees how Fulton creates value. He stated that the ways they create value are “by caring, listening, understanding and delivering.” Wenger went on to explain that, a few years ago, the corporation asked their customers what they wanted the bank to do, and those were the most popular answers. These actions do not only create value, but also achieve Fulton’s goals of operational excellence, growth and talent management. Wenger believes that continually working to achieve their goals and create new value is something that not only the corporation should do, but all the students in attendance of the speech should as well.
Wegner’s speech gave a look at some of the inner workings and ideals of such a large corporation as the Fulton Financial Corporation. However, as the speech wrapped up, Wenger decided to speak directly to the audience with some advice. “Everything will change. Never stop learning,” Wenger told students. “You become old when you stop learning new things. For some people, that may be at 25, and for others, it may be at 85. But never stop learning new things.”
