Toby Reschan

While most young banks make a sprint for assets in their de novo years, 4-year-old San Diego Trust Bank is focused primarily on earnings, and is beating its bank formation earnings estimates by about $2 million over the last three years, says Toby Reschan, chief operating officer.

Reschan should know; he was the second officer through the door — following President Mike Perry — when the one-office, Bankers Hill commercial bank opened in October of 2003. Prior to joining San Diego Trust, Reschan ran the branch system at Peninsula Bank, working for Larry Willette, who is now a director emeritus at San Diego Trust.

As one of 17 employees, Reschan says his operations job is a potpourri of branch management, marketing, human resources, finance and IT. The bank specializes in commercial real estate and construction financing with a lending limit under $4 million. Loan demand remains strong, says Reschan, but adds that bankers are keeping their eyes on Downtown construction, and “over the next year or two we’ll see if there’s too much of it.”

An operations profit center Reschan has his eye on is online banking. “The technology is changing on a daily basis,” he says. “With the development of secure environments and platforms, if people are more comfortable using the technology, online banking is far less expensive than brick and mortar.”

In fact, San Diego Trust has been in no royal rush to branch, though Reschan says the bank is looking at its options. In any event, branching decisions will be “people driven,” Reschan explains. “If we don’t find the banker, we don’t branch.”

Reschan credits the bank’s lean operation with improving performance. For the quarter ended March 31, San Diego Trust earned $403,000, a 29 percent increase over the prior year.

The community banking environment is less than ideal. Money is still relatively cheap, squeezing margins, and the Fed may decide to lower rates later this year. Reschan says the race for deals is “extremely competitive as people work to complete their strategic plan. Our company says we’re going to return bottom-line performance to shareholders, not based solely on growth. Being biggest is not what’s most important to us.”