Maria McDaniels, Managing Director, Florida Capital Bank

Invest: discussed Jacksonville’s potential for continued financial health and community development with Florida Capital Bank Managing Director Maria McDaniels, as her bank continues to bolster growth through its community commercial, mortgage and specialty banking.

What have been the major contributions of Florida Capital Bank in Jacksonville over the last year?

Florida Capital Bank is the only community bank headquartered in Jacksonville, and in testament to our true community banking model, we pride ourselves in making a large impact on our community through our CRA involvement, as well as through volunteer work with local and national companies that are driven towards community and giving back. From the perspectives of lending and banking, we are focused on cultivating relationships with individual customers as well as with small businesses. Customers can choose to bank anywhere, so we focus heavily on our community-based relationship management.

What makes Jacksonville an ideal location for business expansion and relocation from a banking point of view?

Much of the country shut down during the pandemic, but we did our best to stay open and welcome tourists and incoming residents. Jacksonville continues to expand, and we have worked extremely hard as a city to revitalize our downtown to attract young talent, families and startups, as well as preserving our long-term businesses. Our strong naval presence also offers an additional area of development.

Which of Florida Capital Bank’s products do you expect to be the main drivers of growth moving forward?

Our management team has adopted a forward-thinking model over the last 12 to 18 months in response to shifts in the banking industry, and we have three strong lines of business: our community commercial bank, our mortgage bank, and our specialty banking. The payment line of business is and will continue to be strong. The mortgage business is cyclical and will turn around, and when it does it will be another strong line of business for us as it has in the past. We have been able to maintain an effective line of business with our mortgage bank despite the high rates, insurance increases and skyrocketing home prices. We’re focused on growing all three sectors of the bank but probably put a bit more time into expanding our footprint on the community commercial side, as we continue to put thought into opening and closing brick and mortar branches versus new options such virtual pop-ups.

How have client expectations shifted recently?

Clients want instant gratification, but we have found that they also want exceptional service. If the digital service is not working or the experience is not what they are looking for, clients are still going to call their personal banker. It’s important that when clients pick up the phone that they are able to reach someone.

In what aspects does Florida Capital Bank leverage technology and innovation to operate more efficiently and to satisfy customers?

We utilize this more heavily on the specialty banking side rather than for the community bank. We process payments for businesses from all over the country at all times of day, so we leverage technology to accomplish those tasks, so we aren’t hiring bodies every other day to keep up with the growth of the bank. We look for strategic ways to increase our technology, like considering open banking, for example. To have the best technology you have to be willing to move with the times, and this is what we are focused on.

What trends in Jacksonville’s banking industry are you taking note of?

Through our Florida markets we are contending with constant growth. This involves being able to scale with younger businesses that want to revitalize their towns and attract the right people to live in our communities. The revitalization efforts we are seeing involve cultivating community spaces meant for families and people-centered recreation instead of rows upon rows of impersonal high rises blocking out of our downtown.

From an operations perspective, are there any recent regulatory or compliance trends your bank is observing?

As seen on the news, we are closely paying attention to the recent consent orders and the extremely high regulatory scrutiny of banking as a service and payments, all of which greatly affect my specialty banking line of business. Many banks have attempted to enter banking as a service to obtain low-cost deposits because interest rates are currently so high that you are essentially having to pay for deposits. The regulators are halting that and continue to hand out consent orders. We definitely feel the regulatory pressure because as I said growing our specialty banking line of business is a big focus. We face increased competition as more banks will try to implement banking as a service and feel the pressure of interest rates as like the rest of our industry we wait to see what happens in this election year.

Looking toward the future, what will be your top strategies for the next two to three years?

We are highly focused on growing in multifaceted ways – through cultivating growth in technology, market, and people. We intend to continue expanding our footprint from the branch side as well as the specialty banking line of business. Once the regulatory chaos slows down, we will continue exploring banking as a service.