Vern Aguirre

If you think you have a long commute to the office, meet Vern Aguirre. The California regional executive with Banco Popular leaves his home in Coronado at 5:45 a.m. and drives to a train station in Oceanside to catch the 6:44. This gets Aguirre to his Disneyland Drive office in Anaheim by 8.

“People are surprised when I tell them that I live in Coronado and work in Anaheim,” Aguirre says. “But if you love what you do, it’s a manageable commute to a dream job.”

Aguirre supervises the Banco Popular branch and lending network in all of California, overseeing more than 500 employees. The bank’s California holdings include the online lender e-loans.

“It was a great acquisition,” Aguirre says. “We’ve learned a lot about state of the art, Internet technology, especially online applications and processes, and we’re using them to gather deposits as well.”

Aguirre started out in the management training program with Arizona’s Valley National Bank in 1972, and credits Valley National with providing a strong foundation to his banking career. He’s been with Banco Popular since 1997.

Part of Banco Popular’s California strategy is opening up branches in neighborhood Wal-Marts. The bank has 25 Wal-Mart offices, 22 in California and three in Puerto Rico, where the bank is headquartered.

“We want to be the premier community bank in the communities we serve,” Aguirre says. “Where we have a branch, we have local decision making, local community involvement, and community giving. Hiring decisions and marketing are done locally, too.”

Banco Popular has two San Diego area offices, one in Chula Vista, and the other in a San Marcos Wal-Mart.

Financial education is a large part of Banco Popular’s mission. “We find that we spend a lot of time educating first-generation Hispanics about why they should be in a bank instead of putting their savings under the mattress, and the need to establish credit,” Aguirre explains.

Measured by the number of loans it makes, Banco Popular is the nation’s fifth largest SBA lender. The ongoing centralization of SBA functions is not a problem for the bank, Aguirre says, because many of its loans are under the SBA Express program, which has limited documentation. “It’s a 50 percent guarantee,” says Aguirre. “We pick up all of the fees, and generally the loans don’t exceed $150,000, so there’s quick approval turnaround, usually in 24 hours.”

Aguirre says the bank’s biggest challenge is bringing in enough deposits to keep up with loan demand. “We offer very aggressive rates, 5.5 percent for a money market account, which brings in good deposits, but it’s an expensive strategy for funding loans.”

The bank’s Hispanic roots are a double edged sword: it provides instant credibility in Hispanic neighborhoods, but may leave non-Hispanics with the impression that it serves only Hispanics.

“If you look at us in California, our customers mirror the communities we’re in,” Aguirre says. “In (L.A.’s) Koreatown, the customers and employees are Korean. We’re also in mainly Chinese neighborhoods, such as L.A.’s Hacienda Heights. Because of our name and history in Latin America, people confuse us with being a Mexican bank, but we’re FDIC insured, traded on Nasdaq, and here to serve the entire market. But we find once we tell our story, we’re embraced, because of our high-touch, personalized banking services, and you don’t have to be Hispanic to appreciate that.”