William M. Crozier, Jr., Chief of BayBanks, Inc., Dies at 90
William Crozier, who through a span of 21 years developed BayBank into the region’s leading consumer bank, died peacefully, surrounded by family at his Wellesley home on February 21, 2023. He was 90 years old. Bill’s most important career reward was the high regard customers had for their bank, BayBank.
Contrary to common opinion, BayBank was not a new bank in the 1970s when the name first appeared in the Massachusetts market. Previously known as Baystate Corporation and before that as Old Colony Trust Associates, BayBanks, Inc. was a holding company that owned 12 banks including Harvard Trust Company, Middlesex County National Bank, Norfolk County Trust Company and Valley Bank and Trust Company in Springfield. Some banks had been acquired as early as 1928. In a style familiar to denizens of Harvard, each tub stood on its own bottom, which too often sacrificed group synergy in the name of local autonomy. All of that was to change when Bill Crozier was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1974.
Bill and his holding company team, with the endorsement of bank managements, set about combining bank operations, modernizing facilities, offering new products - notably the BayBank Card - and marketing those products in ways that brought to the consuming public the best and most convenient banking to be found anywhere in the country. Customers were not the only beneficiaries, although BayBanks always put the customers first, followed by staff and then shareholders. Being last had its advantages: from 1974 to 1996 -- when BayBanks was acquired by the Bank of Boston Corp. -- shareholders had earned a compound rate of return of over 20%.
William Marshall Crozier Jr. was born on October 2, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York. When his father, active in Wall Street finance, died in 1935, his mother, Alice Parsons Crozier, moved with her son to Englewood, New Jersey to be near her sister and family. Bill attended the Englewood School for Boys and graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover in 1950. A 1954 graduate of Yale University, he embarked on a banking career in New York City with the Hanover Bank -- a path interrupted for two years by service in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps.
With an encouraging career start behind him, Bill enrolled at Harvard Business School in 1961 and met his bride-to-be, Prudence Slitor, at a Wellesley College mixer that fall. He graduated with Distinction in 1963. While serving as an analyst between years at the bank stock firm of M.A. Shapiro & Co., he came across Baystate Corporation, a banking company that appeared to have a commanding presence in the rapidly growing “Route 128 market” surrounding Boston. When after graduation he was offered a job by Baystate, it would prove to be a promising place to work, settle down, and raise a family.
Rising through the ranks, Bill was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in 1974 with a clear mandate to unlock Baystate’s considerable potential. The most important step required establishing ways to deliver - and promote - the combined power of the banks that together controlled a major share of the greater Boston banking market. A name, BayBank, was chosen to identify the group and the BayBank Card developed to give access to accounts that customers previously could only use at their individually named institution. With a common name that, among other things, enabled economical access to the Boston television market, and a growing portfolio of account offerings focused on the increasingly ubiquitous Automated Teller Machine, BayBank began its steady march to market prominence. In time, on-line banking via the computer also would prove an instant success in a market highly receptive to technology based services.
Along the way, the corporation’s combined strength and institutional stability, moreover, was more than up to the savings bank NOW account challenge in the 1970s and proved essential for weathering the serious regional recession of the late 1980s. As the millennium drew near and the pace of consolidation in the banking industry quickened - a trend often stimulated by the need for scale given the rising cost of innovation — BayBank Inc. agreed to a combination with the Bank of Boston Corporation under the name of BankBoston. The consolidation successfully accomplished, Bill, Chairman, retired in 1998 and was named Chairman Emeritus.
A longtime resident of Wellesley and Nantucket, Bill was involved in a wide variety of banking, civic, corporate, educational and philanthropic activities. Among them: Boston Symphony Orchestra, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harvard Business School, the New England Historic Genealogical Society; and on Nantucket, the Land Council. In 1989, at the request of Gov. Michael Dukakis, he led the Governor’s Management Task Force with the mission to identify opportunities for improved fiscal management and increased government effectiveness.
Bill was a past President of the Union Club of Boston and the Commercial Club of Boston -- the Merchant's Club. He served on the vestry and as Treasurer of Trinity Church, Boston, and as Treasurer of the Cathedral Chapter of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Society of the Colonial Wars, and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Mr. Crozier is survived by his wife of 59 years, Prudence Slitor Crozier, and their three children Matthew (Kelly) Crozier, Abigail Crozier Nestlehutt (Mark Nestlehutt), and Patience Crozier (Jessica Keimowitz), and seven grandchildren, Grace, Louisa and Nathaniel Crozier, Asa and Honor Nestlehutt, Hannah and Miriam Crozier.
A service will be held on Saturday, April 1 at 11:00 am at the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul located at 138 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02111. In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul or Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Development Office, 116 Huntington Avenue, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02116.