Massachusetts community banks are experiencing “dramatic growth” in loan demand amid the turmoil in the national credit and financial markets, according to Thomas J. O’Connor, director of Financial Institution Services at G.T. Reilly & Co., a Boston-based accounting and business consulting firm.

“We’re seeing it across the board with our local banking clients. This is a time of opportunity for community banks, such as Massachusetts cooperative banks, particularly those who stick with high underwriting standards,” said O’Connor.

Mansfield Bank in Mansfield has seen its mortgage business triple, according to bank president John Korona.

“We’re closing $2 million to $4 million in mortgages each month, which is double to triple what we’ve done in the past. Countrywide and Washington Mutual were the biggest players in our region, but now they’re gone,” Korona said.

The bank has also seen a nearly 20-fold increase in commercial loans. In the first quarter of 2008, Mansfield Bank recorded outstanding business loan originations totaling $417,000. In the third quarter the bank’s outstanding business loan originations jumped to $7.4 million.

“The liquidity has dried up in the commercial conduits, where large commercial loans are originated and sold to the secondary market,” said Korona, who noted that the increase in business loan demand is almost entirely from New England-based businesses.

At Needham Bank, the demand for mortgage loans is growing by $30 million per month, a “significant change,” said bank president Jack McGeorge.

 “The mortgage brokers can’t put clients into the secondary markets like they did in the past,” McGeorge said. “In the past, clients could call up a mortgage broker and say, ‘I need a mortgage. Make it happen.’ They could bypass the application process, the interview. It was an era of easy loans.”