Bob Marshall

When he’s not managing credit quality as chief credit officer of Escondido-based California Com-munity Bank, Bob Marshall likes to take to the slopes of Mammoth Mountain on a ski board. "I grew up surfing and waterskiing," Marshall explains. "So ski boarding is almost like surfing when you’re riding a wave."

Marshall has navigated the growth of the $124 million bank’s loan portfolio while maintaining credit quality in a highly competitive loan environment.

"I’m responsible for reviewing and recommending loans to both our management loan committee and directors’ loan committee, so we try to process loan requests rapidly," Marshall says.

Marshall has been with California Community since its opening in August 2003; the lender has more than two decades of experience at Crocker Bank, San Diego Trust & Savings Bank, and Rancho Santa Fe National Bank, in addition to California Community.

With real estate deals increasingly rate driven, Marshall says the bank is focusing on bread and butter commercial, in-dustrial and manufacturing clients with sales in the $10 million to $20 million market.

"There is a pressure to make deals and it can become ‘If another bank is doing it, why aren’t we?’" he says. "Some-times we get participation opportunities from other banks that have already been approved by their credit committees, and you look at it and it doesn’t work for us."

The approach has led to no delinquent accounts at California Community, Marshall says. "We’ve been very lucky, and want to be very conservative on the type of credit we bring in," he says. "We were proactive in seeing the direction of real estate. We never did a condo conversion, for example."

In the next three to five years, Marshall says he foresees the bank growing through either expansion or acquisition. "We’ve been fairly aggressive opening up three branches in three years, but the key is finding the right people," he says.