As outside counsel to financial institutions early in her career, Shayna Arrington saw some companies that followed the rules regardless of whether they made economic sense. Others did what they wanted and asked for forgiveness later.
"That gave me a really good perspective on where my risk appetite was personally and the importance of aligning with an institution that shared that risk appetite," Arrington said.
She found a match in 2017 at The Money Source, a Phoenix-based correspondent lender that has diversified over the last decade into banking through an affiliated company called Servbank, based in Oswego, Illinois. Arrington is now the bank's chief risk officer.
Her risk appetite was put to a major test in 2025 during two major initiatives for Servbank, a $1.7 billion-asset bank that had focused mostly on commercial and institutional customers as a mortgage subservicer.
The bank expanded its retail presence after striking a deal last year to buy Iroquois Federal Savings & Loan Association, a Watseka, Illinois-based community bank with seven branches. At the same time, Servbank converted from a state-chartered bank to a national bank under the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Arrington brought a positive, can-do attitude to both challenges, according to Servbank chief operating officer Richard Toma, who first met Arrington at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She was a presidential management fellow, and he was deputy director for the office of lender activities and program compliance for the Federal Housing Administration.
"We've done some things we've never thought that we would do, and we did them incredibly successfully and actually had a little bit of fun along the way," he said.
Arrington also leaned on her ability to build and sustain relationships. She reached out to OCC officials ahead of the conversion, drawing on lessons she learned while working at HUD. She recalled often saying that if she were ever in the private sector, she would connect with regulators.
"I don't want to operate in a black hole and then come out on the other side and have the OCC come in and look at it," she said. "To me, it's really a partnership every step of the way so they know what we're building."
After the acquisition of Iroquois Federal, meanwhile, she leveraged the women's executive forum she founded at Servbank. Arrington brought Iroquois Federal's women leaders into the forum, forging ties between the two institutions.
"It really invites the women that participate to get to know each other as people and help each other solve their leadership problems,' Arrington said.
That Arrington can find solutions is no surprise to Joy Hadley, a retired HUD official who previously managed Arrington and now is on the board at Servbank. "If it was due on a certain date, she was going to deliver it, and it was going to be delivered right the first time."
