Banking Relationship Supports Property Management Company’s Growth in a Complex Industry
A conversation with Scott and Garrett Brady, Progressive Property Management
Business Snapshot
A family-owned and operated company, Progressive manages single-family rental properties, HOAs, condominiums and multi-unit communities throughout Southern California and applies new technologies and systems to the property management industry.
Business Leader
Scott Brady, President/Owner
Headquarters
Anaheim, CA
What are the biggest challenges you face as a business?
On the banking side, our biggest challenge is making sure that the large sum of money we are trusted with is not poached by unscrupulous people. In the property and association management industries, we are a target for fraud, as cybercriminals know we cut a lot of checks and approve a lot of invoices.
There are other key challenges that come with such a complex business as property management. We're continuously opening and closing accounts, changing board members and signees — there is constant movement.
For this reason, we are also always looking for ways to become as efficient as possible, especially as we grow. As an example, we moved to new software six months ago and, as you can imagine, the process of moving 3,500 owners to a new software system is a big endeavor. These business decisions require strong, extremely dedicated partners so that the changes are experienced as smoothly as possible by our clients.
How did Enterprise help solve these challenges?
Because doing business in our industry is complex, our banking needs and the relationship are complex as well. The whole Enterprise team has been great to work with: managing all of our moving parts, being responsive and making communication easy. When we send an email, we get a response in 10 to 15 minutes. If we need financial documents from a year ago, we can get them from Enterprise that same day. We do our financials on a monthly basis, so our controller works very closely with Enterprise to make sure those financials are accurate.
To address vulnerabilities to fraud, we've been working hand-in-hand with Enterprise to put strong safeguards in place so that we can prevent any kind of cyber or traditional check fraud, including using the bank’s positive pay system to do our due diligence and protect our funds. The team is proactive and gives us a call when a suspicious check comes across their desk.
Another huge benefit from Enterprise is the Earnings Credit Rate Program, where we earn credits to offset fees and third-party invoices that we then use to better protect our funds. The credits are a big sticking point for us to run a more efficient organization.
What is the impact on your business?
When it comes to Enterprise, it's not just business, it’s personal. Support and expertise from the Enterprise team have helped us evolve from a good-sized management company, to now a company with almost unlimited growth potential. That was thanks to the encouragement from a banking team who knew this side of the business and the margin for growth for an operator like us.
In business, your most important people are your accountant, banker and attorney. I have a great attorney and I've had a great CPA for a number of years, but we never really had a relationship with a bank until we met Enterprise. I feel strongly now that we have a great banker who supports our growth if we need to grow, helps us earn bank credits through other banking products like loans and credit cards, and makes sure we are running the organization as best we can. So the last of the three pillars you have to have as a business owner — the right banker — we have with Enterprise.
We wouldn't grow this business if I didn't think we could do it well, while protecting the assets we have under management. We wouldn’t think about expanding into new regions or making an acquisition without a solid system in place and a solid relationship with both our bank and our software provider. Because of the relationship with Enterprise, we’re willing to grow this business and will grow it as fast as we can.
