Columbia Bank EVP describes plans for Central Coast region
It has been seven months since Pacific Premier Bank’s merger with Columbia Bank closed and in that time, the financial institution has set its sights on the impact it wants to have on the Central Coast.
Closed on Sept. 2, the new Columbia Bank houses approximately $70 billion in assets with approximately $50 billion in loans and $56 billion in deposits.
The combined organization will operate more than 350 locations across eight western states — Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Idaho. Pacific Premier had nine locations throughout SLO and Santa Barbara Counties, all of which rebranded and remain open following the merger.
Jamie Robinson, the executive vice president, Southern California regional director at Columbia Bank, is no stranger to the region. Joining Columbia through the merger, Robinson was the senior executive vice president, head of commercial and branch banking at Pacific Premier, encompassing all of Southern California and the Central Coast through Paso Robles.
As a result, Robinson called the Central Coast “a very diverse landscape.”
“You have agriculture, distribution, all kinds of varying degrees of business types that are in that market and the reason I think we had so much success in this market is supporting all the different businesses that need it,” Robinson told the Business Times. “We are going to continue to do that.”
Robinson highlighted that Pacific Premier was a solid agricultural lender in the Central Coast market, but “then you add on a bank like Columbia, which is now the ninth largest agricultural lender in the United States and you say, that is a lot of expertise we are bringing to the market.”
As a medium-sized bank, defined as having assets in the $10 billion to $500 billion range, Robinson said Columbia also fits the Central Coast mold to grow with the many small- and medium-sized businesses in the region.
“These businesses are usually looking for what I like to call a true relationship bank, where they get to know the people they’re local to in their market, to service them and grow with them,” he said.
One thing Robinson also credited Columbia Bank with was its ability to create de novo branches, a new bank branch established from scratch by a financial institution, rather than acquired through merger, acquisition, or conversion.
He noted that, given the nine branches located throughout San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties, there is not an immediate need for a new branch there, but added that the Ventura market could be an interesting place for a de novo branch in the future.
“That’s also an area where there’s a gap, where we have customers that are there that I think would be a great strategy,” Robinson said.
“Overall, as a bank, we’re really excited to continue our growth across the western region,” Alexandria Plew, senior manager, corporate communications at Columbia, told the Business Times. “We are Pacific-rooted, we were founded in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve really continued to grow across all of California. and SoCal in particular is a big focus for us in the coming months, years.”
This is not the first time Robinson has gone through a major banking merger.
In fact, what brought him to Pacific Premier in 2016 was that the bank had actually acquired his previous employer, Security Bank of California. He noted that one key factor in banking acquisitions is the due diligence on “getting the people right, getting the cultures of the two companies aligned.”
He believes Columbia hit that with Pacific Premier.
“I’m passionate about the company I work for and I’m really excited about this. The integration of this company and the capability and the impact that we can continue to have is,” Robinson said. “Being a community bank at scale, that is where we love to operate.”
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