Joseph Benoit

Joseph Benoit is the new San Diego market president for Union Bank of California, the San Francisco-based behemoth nearing $50 billion in assets. Benoit manages the Union branch network in a territory that includes 95 branches in four counties: San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial.

Benoit brings 27 years of experience, the last 14 with Union, to his new post. He’s a self-described “commercial guy” who finds himself heading up a retail management operation. He’s even had two sojourns away from banking, one with a computer software firm, the other as chief operating officer of a floor-covering contractor.

“I had the view from the other side of the desk, which I hope made me a better banker,” he says.

One of the challenges Benoit faces in his new position is compliance with regulatory schemes that place new and expensive burdens on banks. “Laws such as the Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering laws make it necessary for the bank to know what our customers do, what their line of business is, and how they conduct their business,” Benoit says. “It’s a big change from a generation ago. When you had a person with a million dollars, you weren’t concerned so much what the source of the funds was. Now we are obligated to find out what the source of funds is, and that’s a big difference. We talk about KYC, or ‘know your client.’”

He manages a huge brick and mortar network, yet Benoit also is interested in the state of online banking. Although Union Bank offers a full suite of online services, Benoit says less than 20 percent of customers use online banking. “It seems like there’s only a certain group of people who feel comfortable with it and there’s another group that likes coming into the branches,” he says.

Benoit succeeds Ron Kendrick in the San Diego chair. Like Kendrick, Benoit says his values were shaped by working in his parents’ business.

“My mentors were my parents,” Benoit says. “I started working in their dry cleaning establishment in the seventh grade across the street from Hoover High.” Their examples of hard work and dealing with customers provided Benoit with lessons he has carried forward, he says.