Hoping to lead a renaissance in local community banking, Regents Bank has weathered a recession and a September 2001 opening on the way to doubling its asset base in its first year. For the record, Regents amassed $76.8 million on Sept. 30, a 125 percent increase over $34 million just nine months earlier.

La Jolla-based Regents, which also has a Downtown branch in Koll Center, is piloted by San Diego native Dan Yates, previously regional vice president for the $1.7 billion Mellon 1st Business Bank, once referred to by Forbes as the “best unknown bank in the country.”

Yates has some experienced hands on deck to help sail Regents, including long-time La Jolla attorney William Nelson, who was Scripps Bank’s chairman of the board before it was sold to US Bank. Wielding the chairman’s gavel at Regents is Thomas Young, Regents’ largest shareholder, and the former president/chairman/ CEO of Northwest National Bank, a $400 million bank headquartered in Vancouver, Wash. Young also is a former director of a branch of the 12th District Federal Reserve Bank.

Other key members of the executive suite include Chief Credit Officer Monte Schwartz, CFO Randy Krenelka, and operations officer Dave Sherwood. Regents, says Yates, is positioning itself as a business bank for small and mid-sized business, generally between $2 million and $30 million in annual revenue. It offers high-touch service for commercial banking including revolving credit lines, short-term working capital, accounts receivables finance, equipment, business acquisition and SBA.

While the new bank expects to lose $1.6 million in 2002, Yates anticipates becoming profitable early this year.

Looking to the future, Yates predicts in five years we’ll be surprised the community banking industry is continuing to thrive and play an important role in local economies despite consolidation in the industry as a whole. An increasingly larger number of consumers, he says, will embrace technologies like online bill payment.

As for what keeps him up at night, Yates says he thinks about the numerous opportunities that lie ahead and how Regents will need to make smart choices to deal with the normal challenges and potential threats that come with building a bank.