Carlos Iafigliola, Director & Interim CEO, Amerant Bank

May 2026 — Invest: spoke with Carlos Iafigliola, director and interim CEO of Amerant Bank, about the bank’s strategic reset and disciplined growth strategy. “We’ve focused on repositioning the bank to target preferred lending sectors and streamlining our operations,” Iafigliola said.

What have been some of the main highlights and key milestones for Amerant Bank over the last year?

Since I took the role as interim CEO, we started an intentional process of recalibrating our credit risk appetite. We went through a process of selective growth to recompose the loan portfolio and create an improved composition that would allow us to grow organically and sustainably.

The fourth quarter of 2025 was a quarter of general repositioning of the balance sheet. It was a quarter that allowed us to create efficiencies by terminating several contracts and improving our run rate of operating expenses. The intention was to reposition the bank in 2026 for a more profitable year. During 1Q26, I am very proud that we accomplished net income of almost $18 million for the bank, so the efforts we made during the fourth quarter are starting to pay off. We ended with earnings per share of $0.44, so we were in line with market consensus.

Going forward, we are not afraid of crossing $10 billion in assets. 

How is the bank positioned to resume growth?

The bank is ready and positioned to start growing again and creating new relationships. One example is our recent opening of our second location in Tampa. Tampa has been a good new market for us, reaching close to $300 million in total assets and close to $150 million in deposits. The third upcoming branch is in St. Petersburg, which we are targeting to open in the fourth quarter of 2026.

We also continue to expand in Miami. We had two Miami Beach branch openings. The first was on 41st Street, which is our first branch in Miami Beach, right on the causeway. The second, which opened in January 2026 is in Bay Harbor. Those branches are already performing well.

The nature of Amerant’s business is that we combine high-touch customer service and great private banking service with strong connectivity to our business owners on the commercial side.

How is Amerant’s business structured?

We have two lines of business at the bank, and that is a reflection of the market we are in. It is the way banks in South Florida generally operate. We have an international division and a domestic division.

The strategy on the international side is primarily deposit gathering and bringing customers to use our investment platform and trust services. Everything that involves wealth management, depository relationships, payments, and account services is what we are trying to accomplish on the international side.

We are not lending significantly on the international side unless the underlying asset is in the United States. We do mortgages and securities-based lending on the international side, but we do not take cross-border risk or lend in Latin America. That was a line of business that was de-emphasized years ago. The way I see the bank is that the international side is a net provider of funds to the domestic business.

In the domestic division of the bank, the two primary businesses are private banking and commercial banking. The objective, which I believe is consistent with our strategy of being a small but smart financial institution, is to cross-sell to the business and the business owners.

We have a relationship-first approach. We develop the relationship with the business, whether it is a corporation, a commercial business, or commercial real estate, and then we go back to the sponsors, if it is a commercial real estate deal, or the business owners, if it is corporate or commercial. Our private banking team then services those needs.

That is a strategy that, over the past four years, has provided very good dividends to the bank. Our private banking team has grown from zero to $1.3 billion in total deposits.

How is Amerant’s strategic reset toward sustainable growth and disciplined credit management shaping the bank’s medium-term trajectory?

We do not have any problems when it comes to capital or liquidity, so the bank is really solid. We are publicly traded and regulated by the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FINRA, and the SEC at the broker-dealer level. We have a significant number of positive attributes when it comes to the strength of the balance sheet and the regulatory framework we adhere to as a financial institution.

When you come out of a period of four and a half years of significant growth in the loan portfolio, there are certain transactions that, because of the nature of the growth, may not have come with the ideal risk profile that you would have desired for your balance sheet. You have to work those out, either by adding additional components that would make them suitable for your new risk appetite, or by exiting those transactions.

When we talk about resetting and recalibrating the risk appetite, it means understanding that there are certain transactions we do not want to do again, and there are specific sectors where we do not want to be overexposed in the future.

It is not that we are not going to grow, and it is not that we are not going to lend. Quite the opposite. We want to lend, and we want to do business, but it has to be in sync with our risk appetite. We want transactions that allow us to have a predictable credit profile and avoid specific impacts from short-term events.

We said this during our earnings call: We will prioritize businesses with stable balance sheets and stable profit-and-loss performance, as opposed to projected performance. When you lend into a field that has a lot of projections, things may not perform the way you expected. Therefore, you have to take additional reserves, take a loss, or do something different with that specific loan.

What we are balancing is the need to have more of these predictable transactions as opposed to ones that are more projection-based.

What international opportunities could drive future growth for the bank?

Our international business is significant at the bank, and we have had a historical presence with Venezuelan customers. That has created an opportunity for us that we are planning to leverage as much as possible.

We are getting significant positive news out of the country with recent developments. We provided the market with the latest on this when we announced earnings, and we are still very bullish on those opportunities ahead. They may become a significant driver for the future growth of the bank.