Meet & Greet

Back in Banking

Robin Robeson found at least two big benefits to taking a detour in her banking career a few years ago for a management role with a software company. Working in an unregulated industry for a change was fun, and she developed an appreciation for all that software she took for granted as a banking executive.

"I was a user of it, but I was never really much involved in the strategy and I can't say that I understood all the technology behind what we were using. And now I do. I look at things with a different set of eyes."

Those eyes will now be on the day-to-day operations of Guaranty Federal Bancshares in Springfield, Mo., where she started as chief operating officer on July 30.

Robeson previously spent 10 years with The Commerce Trust Co., also in Springfield, before temporarily leaving the industry for a COO-type role with Duck Creek Technologies, which was sold to Accenture in2011.

nCino Man

When Live Oak Bank in Wilmington, N.C., needed an operating system, it decided to build one on its own. Bank President and COO Neil Underwood and Chairman and CEO Chip Mahan spearheaded the development. Their aim: a system that would never require that data be entered more than once, and one that would allow the status of loans and loan documents to be seen in real time.

The benefits of what they came up with were sizeable enough that Live Oak decided to market the technology to other banks. And a separate company called nCino (a play on encino, the Spanish word for live oak) was born.

Enter Pierre Naude, a longtime financial technology executive and, like Mahan, a veteran of S1 Corp., the software development firm acquired last year by ACI Worldwide. Naude came to nCino on Feb. 20 and had his first six customers signed by April, though the company didn't announce its official launch until early August.

Naude (he's from South Africa, not France, though he's lived in the United States long enough that you'd be hard pressed to place the accent) says nCino can shave weeks off the processing time for originations. He envisions nCino eventually building a client portal, so that even borrowers can track the status of their loan documents in the cloud.

Kanas' Comeback

With some areas of his noncompete agreement now expired, BankUnited CEO John Kanas looks ready to make his New York return a splash. From branches of Herald National Bank that it bought earlier this year, BankUnited is hoping to launch in New York with at least 30 lenders on board, according to analysts at KBW, which hosted Kansas at a recent investor dinner. KBW predicts many of those staffers will come from among the 350 former North Fork lenders now with Signature Bank.

Kanas can't poach anyone from North Fork's acquirer, Capital One, until February 2013. Nor can he close any acquisitions of his own before then. But analysts expect BankUnited to start looking soon for New York targets that match Kanas' interests (C&I, yes; multifamily housing, no, according to KBW ). The analysts say BankUnited's New York market potential could equal or surpass the $2 billion pace of annual loan growth in its home state of Florida.

Big Apple, Middle Market

As TriState Capital Bank's new market president in New York, Thomas Gilmartin says he's busily putting together a team of seasoned bankers, "25-year veterans who have been in the market." In other words, bankers a lot like him.