Tammy Kemp

Chief Credit Officer, Garrington Group of Companies

Tammy Kemp is the chief credit officer for the Garrington Group of Companies.  An industry veteran with 25 years of experience in growing loan portfolios, leading teams and delivering client-focused lending solutions.

Working exclusively in entrepreneurial companies provided Tammy with the opportunity to learn from the ground up, working as a field examiner, collateral analyst, underwriter, special accounts manager, through to leading realizations and portfolio management.

Most recently, as the CCO at the Garrington Group, Tammy is focused on sourcing and using technology as a means of providing valuable portfolio performance data across multiple and diverse lending portfolios.   Recognizing that while asset-based lending will always be a people-focused industry, technology has the power to amplify access to data and ideally provide teams with meaningful information, allowing them to ask timely questions and better identify trends.

Tammy has a passion for building relationships and believes that a strong bond between clients and lenders, coupled with an engaged and empowered portfolio management and underwriting team, is key to risk mitigation and portfolio growth.

What advice would you offer to women just starting out in the industry? 

Start with a mindset of flexibility coupled with a willingness to learn and a spirit of dedication.

Setting goals is also so important, both for the long term as well as for the short and medium term.

Five-year goals are great for setting a vision; however, there is real value in setting quarterly objectives and annual goals as signposts along the way.  Do not forget to look up and outward, checking in with yourself along the way.  We can get focused on the “what” and forget about the “why.”  The “why” is what keeps us motivated.

Be flexible and open to different opportunities.  Working smartly, being focused, and following your own career path is important, but there can be value in taking a detour.  Particularly if it offers an opportunity to work with a different team or individual you may admire.

Early in my career, I wish I had focused on getting more involved in collaborative opportunities, especially with other teams or departments.  Exposure to other management styles and working with different people can really accelerate learning and growth.

What do you know now that you wish you knew in the beginning of your career?

Be an advocate for yourself.   

Checking in with trusted colleagues or mentors formally or informally is a great way to calibrate where you are.   I found it difficult to really assess where I was in relation to my goals.  I was focused, but found it difficult to see the bigger picture.  Having a trusted resource to help with that earlier would have been beneficial.

I added the word “trusted” deliberately; advice and feedback can come from lots of places and in many different forms, curating this advice is vitally important.  Not all advice is equal; be true to yourself and your goals.

Be willing to fail, and when it happens, embrace it.  It really is true; we learn more from our failures than success.    

What effect, if any, has working remotely had on your career and/or your industry? What have been the challenges and how have you worked to overcome them?

When we were all together in an office, we could see each other’s faces, each other’s body language.  We knew when a colleague was engaging a client in a tough conversation, was struggling with a client’s borrowing base or if they were grappling with a personal matter.

In the office we could support each other almost instantly with a smile or a chat over coffee; that immediate connection and support is gone.

The shift from in-person to virtual from a technical funding perspective, was relatively painless.  The hard part, I think we discovered, is how to make new or maintain significant connections, absent face-to-face meetings.

As a leader, finding new ways to meaningfully connect with the team as well as clients has been challenging.

Flexibility, transparency and clarity in how and when we communicate has been key to nurturing our relationships with each other as teammates as well as entrenching our relationships with clients.

Longer term, I think the work we have done and the way we have solidified our relationships will have a lasting impact and will deepen our connections with our teammates and with our clients.