Debra Putzer

Senior Vice President, CIT

Debra Putzer is senior vice president in Credit Risk Management at CIT, where she holds dual leadership roles as chief client credit officer for CIT Commercial Services, a leading provider of factoring and financing, and as the senior credit officer for CIT’s Asset-Based Lending group. In these roles, Debbie is responsible for the risk management of the loan portfolios as well as the approval of new business transactions.  

A 30-year CIT veteran, Debbie has extensive experience in factoring and asset-based lending, with proven leadership capabilities in portfolio management, new business underwriting, corporate/regulatory compliance, problem loan management and field examination. Previously, Debbie was the senior portfolio manager of the Asset-Based Lending Group at Century Business Credit Corporation (now Wells Fargo Capital Finance).  Early in her career, she became a Certified Public Accountant while working as an auditor with a mid-sized NYC-based accounting firm.

Debbie is active in the NYC Chapter of the Secured Finance Network and previously served on the boards of the Turnaround Management Association (NYC Chapter) and the Commercial Finance League. She graduated from the State University of New York at Albany with an accounting degree and also attended the Wharton Institute of Secured Lending.

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

For women starting out in the industry, the best way to learn is to pay close attention to what your colleagues and other professionals do or say. Listen, observe and be engaged. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or ask for clarifications. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Nothing can accelerate your learning curve faster than being an active, attentive listener.

Also, focus on networking to develop quality relationships, which can play a very meaningful role in helping you grow. Get involved in industry organizations like the Secured Finance Network and attend their networking and educational events whenever you can. Asset-based lending and factoring are relatively small industries and the number of women in these fields is even smaller. Make it a point to connect with the female professionals. I know I did, and today, years and years later, I keep running into the same women I met when I got my start. Relationships like those are important in the beginning, but they also will remain vital for years to come. 

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

Over a career, you build a lifetime of experiences. You grow from all of them, and they shape you. Not all those experiences are good ones. There is a lot of risk in what we do, and things don’t always turn out the way you hope they will. But you learn from both the positive and the negative. It all helps you grow and sharpen your knowledge and skills. That’s what experience is all about. The goal is to treat every day as a learning opportunity and to realize that learning is a career-long process that never stops. I’m always learning. I’m always trying to grow.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

Without a doubt, collaborating with my colleagues is the best part of my job. My CIT colleagues are a wonderfully committed, smart, hard-working group of people. We’ve got a great mix of seasoned professionals working alongside sharp, young, upcoming professionals. The best way to be successful and to get to the right solution is to work together as a team. I feel very lucky that I have such a great group of colleagues to work with.

What effect, if any, has working remotely had on your career and/or your industry? 

It’s been a remarkable year of tremendous challenges. We went from working fulltime in the office, traveling for business and networking to shutdown and working remotely. I never would have dreamed that we could have made such a seamless transition.

Looking back over the last year, I think the biggest impact has been how COVID affected the clients. Every business faced challenges of some kind – some more than others. Most survived but, unfortunately, a few did not. Interestingly, quite a few companies actually managed to improve their financial performance amid the pandemic as they implemented cost-cutting initiatives, accelerated their e-commerce build-out or introduced new products.

The enduring lesson from this pandemic is the need to maintain open lines of communications with clients and colleagues. While that’s always important, it proved critical during the fast-changing business environment that evolved over the last year or so. Relationships that were solid going into this pandemic are even stronger now thanks to our commitment to ongoing communication.