Dive Brief:

• Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Fulton Financial Corp. has hired Rick Kraemer, Valley Bank’s onetime treasurer and deputy chief financial officer, to serve as its next CFO, according to a press release last week.
• Kraemer replaces Betsy Chivinski, who will retire at the end of the year, the bank said. Chivinski, previously Fulton’s chief risk officer, was named interim CFO in February, after Mark McCollom resigned unexpectedly.
• While it was without a permanent CFO, Fulton in April acquired the failed Republic First Bank.

Dive Insight:

Kraemer will join Fulton on Sept. 3 and become CFO in the fourth quarter, the bank said.

In that role, he will oversee accounting, treasury, corporate development, tax, financial planning and forecasting and investor relations, Fulton said.

“I'm confident Rick is the right person to serve as our next Chief Financial Officer,” Fulton CEO Curt Myers said in a statement Tuesday. “He has a proven track record of leading a commercial line of business, overseeing corporate finance functions and developing enterprise strategies to improve profitability.”

In its release, Fulton characterizes Kraemer’s role at Valley as chief banking officer overseeing commercial markets. Kraemer joined Valley in 2017 as first senior vice president of corporate finance and business development, according to his LinkedIn profile. He then took on responsibility as investor relations officer, managing director of financial services and chief financial services officer.

Chivinski, meanwhile, joined Fulton as chief accounting officer in 1994, and stayed in that role for nearly 20 years, her LinkedIn profile shows. She became the bank’s chief audit executive in 2013, then chief risk officer in 2016, according to the profile.

“She's been an integral part of this company's success,” Myers said. “We greatly appreciate all of her contributions over the years and wish her well in retirement.”

Atul Malhotra succeeded Chivinski as Fulton’s chief risk officer in February, when McCollom resigned.

Fulton offered no details surrounding the circumstances of McCollom’s departure, and a bank spokesperson at the time told Lancaster Online that Fulton would not share more than what the February press release offered.

Fulton agreed to pay McCollom $325,000 as part of a separation agreement, Lancaster Online reported.

Without a permanent CFO, Fulton acquired substantially all of Republic First’s assets from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which took over the failed bank after a Pennsylvania regulator shut it down in April. The transaction doubled Fulton’s presence in Philadelphia, helped it enter New York state for the first time, and pushed its assets to around $30 billion.