A real banking relationship for this real estate business

Chattanooga real estate executive Darlene Brown sometimes has coffee with her banker, which is how she likes her business relationships — close and supportive.

"When somebody helps me with my business plan financially, they're my go-to person for any loans I need, or any type of investment I want to make," says Brown, the president and managing partner of Real Estate Partners Chattanooga, LLC, which handles residential and commercial real estate. She has 10 full-time employees and another 120 agents working as independent contractors.

"We're the number one independent company in Chattanooga," she explains. And this busy and successful business owner doesn't bother going anywhere else for her financial support needs.

"For any business, if you have a bank that you trust, that you take everything to, you don't even shop around when you need new services," she says. That's the type of trust and relationship that's important to her, and the type of relationship she has with her local Synovus branch.

"If I have a problem, I can pick up the phone and get it taken care of," Brown says. "That makes all the difference."

Over the decades, this beneficial relationship has gone both ways. In the 1990s, one of Brown's renovation projects was a multi-use retail and apartment business, which helped kicked off the city's downtown revitalization. One of the firms she sold space to was a bank that eventually became part of the Synovus family — so when she visits Synovus, she's stopping by a place she helped build.