He has persevered across a myriad of market cycles
From a young age, the world of finance was endlessly fascinating to Chris Dorin (pictured).
“All through school, it was always finance,” he said of his singular focus. “There was always some version of the avenue I was going to take. I hadn’t figured out what that looked like at the time, but the first part-time jobs I was picking up coming out of high school during summer breaks, I was always working for banks. I got into credit unions as well.”
He knew even then these were the makings of a career in finance: “That was kind of dipping the toe into the banking/lending space, as it were,” he told Mortgage Professional America during an interview.”
So when he landed at Bryant College in Rhode Island – since renamed Bryant University – he was like the proverbial kid in a candy store. “I got a lot of exposure to all kinds of financial theories and modeling and things like that,” he recalled. “It was always something I gravitated towards and always enjoyed. I was pretty skilled at it – at least compared to my peers – so I said, OK I can dip this in and combine that with what I’ve been seeing in the banking front here and get into some version of banking/lending.”
An intellectual curiosity about the world around him further helped guide his career. “I always followed the news and the headlines and what’s happening in the day,” he said.
Forging a career in finance
Those early years would be the making of a career in banking. Today, Dorin is vice president of sales at RCN Capital. He has also been named among the Global 100 as vetted by MPA and its sister publications, showcasing the top professionals in the field. Dorin is one of only 24 US honorees on the rarefied list.
And yet – for all his preparation and study at a prestigious private business school – his first job wasn’t in the lending arena. “Coming out of college, I was doing life insurance but quickly went back to banking and credit unions. It felt like a better fit to be in that lending space. I became a loan officer and eventually became a lending manager at a credit union.”
Soon, his mettle would be truly tested amid the economic crash of 2008, largely fueled by packaged subprime mortgages sold as securities. To this day, the lessons of that time inform his career, he suggested.
“I went through the 2008 market cycle crash, which was a real experience for a lot of people who are in the lending industry today,” he said. “It certainly had an impact on how they viewed things, including some of the cautionary tales you can share with people who hadn’t gone through it.”
To a new generation of professionals, the existential nature of the crisis 15 years on is but an abstraction – but not to Dorin. “There’s a difference in experiences. I see that today when we have younger investors or clients we work with. They hear the stories about it, but they weren’t on the ground when it happened.”
He was working at a credit union at the time, but the excitement of the job wore off – weighted down by bureaucratic machinations of compliance demanded by bolstered regulations as the economic meltdown subsided.
Effectively, the thrill was gone: “It was a little more compliance- and regulatory-based and it really took up a lot of your day-to-day activities. It was more of a drag than it was about helping people. The excitement about that job initially was you got to help people, whether they were getting a home, or a car, or whatever product they had a need for. You really felt like you were helping people and doing right by them.”
RCN Capital comes to the rescue
Mercifully, he would get recruited by RCN Capital by 2014. “You can really help somebody grow their business and develop good strategies with them,” he said with palpable enthusiasm. “That was exciting for me. It was a new challenge, and I was happy to take it on.”
Closing in on his tenth anniversary with RCN Capital, he has had a front-row seat from which to watch the company grow since its 2010 inception.
“By the time I came on I was employee number 20 or so, and that first year we did $50 million worth of business. We were so excited,” he said with a knowing laugh. “Then quicky after that we did $100 million, $150 million, $500 million – all these bigger and bigger numbers. Now, we’re doing almost $2 billion a year the past couple of years. The team has really grown and changed. Like I said, we had 20 employees and now we’re up to 255.”
How great an early fascination with finance has paid off.
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