Dream Maker
8/21/2006 8:32:33 PM by Sandy Lindsey
As the president and CEO of Key Recreational Lending, Grant Skeens is the man that can make boating dreams come true - but don’t think he’s all work and no play.
Photo by Andrew Duany
Avid boater Grant Skeens is in an enviable position. As the president and CEO of Key Recreation Lending and its new luxury yacht division, he helps the dreams of boaters come true. “I’ve been boating since I was a kid,” says Skeens. “My folks had a sunfish sailboat on a lake near Chicago. That whetted my appetite for the sport. Since then we’ve always had some sort of boat or friends with boats.”
Like all boat owners, he has some interesting tales to tell. Such as the time his 20-foot ski boat almost sank. “The boat was in storage,” he explains. “And the company was supposed to replace the plug, but they didn’t. Soon water started accumulating in the boat. I powered forward to get the suction to pull as much water out as possible. Then we had the boat lifted out of the water.”
Not all of his experiences are as hairy. One favorite activity is to go innertubing behind the boat with two tubes and two guys on each tube. The entertaining goal is to see who gets dumped first. At the end of the day in the world of finance, Skeens likes to relax with a leisurely cruise with friends, snacks and refreshments. As is popular in the Chicago area where he’s based (he also has a second home on a rural lake in Wisconsin) he and his family, including his daughter, 10, and son, 8, fish, waterski, cruise, swim and canoe.
To assist others in living the dream, Key Recreational Lending offers a variety of financing options and has been a major sponsor of the mammoth Fort Lauderdale Boat Show for over a decade. “The Fort Lauderdale Boat Show is the premier show in the industry,” Skeens says proudly. “It’s the best show for boaters. We recently renewed our sponsorship contract for several more years.”
To make the “dream” even more attainable, a new luxury yacht division was formed. “It’s a big opportunity to take care of an underserved segment of the market,” Skeens states. “It was set up last year to finance boats over $1 million and offers a variety of unique financing plans including interest-only three-year loans. Some yacht owners only plan to keep the yacht for three years before they upgrade, so the interest-only loan helps them manage their cash flow better. They know that they weren’t going to build up that much equity in the first three years anyway.”
The company opened new offices this past August in the Portside facility in Fort Lauderdale to cater to the luxury yacht buyer, not only the yacht purchase, but for all other full-service banking needs of high net worth individuals via KeyBank’s other divisions. Now under Skeens’ leadership, Key Recreation Lending is a full spectrum lender that can finance anything from a 20-foot bowrider to a multi-million dollar yacht. In addition to the wide variety of vessels financed, the company offers unique payment options including typical monthly payment loans, as well as quarterly, bi-annual and annual payment loans. They also formed a recent partnership with Grand Banks to finance their dealers and are the lead lender for the extensive MarineMax empire.
But Skeens and his family are boaters first, though they also enjoy sailing and offshore fishing. And they don’t always stay in the boat when on the water. “My entire family recently took surfing lessons while on vacation in Maui. We all managed to get up on the board,” he says proudly.