Rick Pullum, President, One Florida Bank
Invest: sat down with Rick Pullum, president of One Florida Bank, to discuss the opportunities in the banking sector in Central Florida, technology in the banking sector, and the importance of company culture. “The business environment here is conducive to continued economic growth, and I’m excited to see what the future holds,” said Pullum.
What have been the overall contributions or impact of One Florida Bank in the Greater Orlando region in the past year?
We’ve grown quite a bit in the past year, making loans and providing treasury management services to our primary client base: local business owners. We’re primarily a commercial-focused bank, where most of our lending activity is economic-generating. We’re lending money to provide capital to support local business owners’ growth needs. It’s what I call blocking and tackling — focusing on what we do best and taking good care of our business clients to help them expand. We’re around $1.7 billion in total assets today and grew by about $150 million last year.
We’re big believers in building our community and our bank. We have many folks on our team involved in community and charitable activities in the market. From sponsored banners at high school football fields to executives serving on non profit boards, it’s important to be connected to the community that we serve.
What is your overview of the banking and finance sector in Greater Orlando?
We’re in a healthy market compared to other regions nationwide. Central Florida, because of the mass influx of new residents, has been somewhat insulated from some issues you read about in other markets, such as people moving away. That trend has certainly benefited many of our business clients, and it has also benefited our bank. It’s a highly competitive banking market. Because of that, we have leveraged our niche, which has allowed us to increase market share. We offer the white-glove service you can’t get at a larger institution, a capital base that is large enough to form a sizable lending relationship, and the ability to compete with larger institutions with the amount of credit we can provide. We also continue to invest heavily in technology. This allows us to compete with larger institutions with our online and mobile banking services fraud protection services. I believe the finance sector is strong and healthy but also highly competitive.
How will artificial intelligence impact the banking sector workforce? AI, from a banking standpoint, actually concerns me because there’s already plenty of fraud — including the idea that someone could manipulate your voice, make a phone call, and request a wire. You may have fraud detection products at the account level, but bankers may not know the person on the other end of the call is actually generated through one of these sophisticated applications that fabricate a voice that could be recognized but would be a scam. There is still a lot of work to be done to be sure our industry has the technology to authenticate requests and securely provide services to our clients.
What products or services do you expect to be the main drivers of growth and why?
We recently had a large client event that was focused on fraud protection. To continue our growth trajectory, we must continue implementing the latest, greatest technology that will protect our clients’ money. Banking, especially commercial banking, is still a people business, and business owners want to bank and keep their money with someone they know they can pick up the phone and talk to. It’s that combination of fraud protection services, white-glove service, and getting that message out that you don’t have to be with a large institution to have the secure online access you need and the level of service you’re looking for locally.
What are some of the greatest challenges the bank has faced, and how has it overcome them?
2023 was a crazy year in the banking industry. The first quarter started with three pretty significant bank failures. Those failures were primarily driven by the Federal Reserve’s rapid, short-term interest rate moves to battle inflation — with short-term rates going up and the value of bonds going down. Thankfully, we got in front of it from a communication standpoint. We’re
small enough that we know our client base. We made the phone calls necessary to ensure our clients understood that we were not in the same position as those banks that failed.
Also, our growth over the last five years has primarily been in local loans, not investment securities. The challenges those failed banks and many others in the industry experienced were securities portfolios that became grossly undervalued — something we were not challenged with. On the liability side of the balance sheet, you could not escape the effect on deposit costs. As a result of the rapid, short-term rate moves, local business owners did not understand what was going on in the market. We did, like all banks, have a fairly significant increase in our cost of funds. This became the biggest challenge that we faced last year. It has somewhat stabilized now on the deposit side, and our loan portfolio is repricing to current market rates. This has allowed us to maintain our margin, and it has started to expand slightly.
What is the outlook for One Florida Bank in the near term, and what are the top priorities moving forward?
We launched our initial strategic plan five years ago and knocked it out of the park. Our priority this year is to finish certain projects that our leadership team identified while creating our next five-year strategic plan. Part of that plan is evaluating and determining what operational changes are necessary to ensure we can handle the next growth phase. We are already working through some of those projects now, which are very attainable. Thankfully, we’ve got a talented group on the operational side that has operated and managed departments in much larger institutions.
I’m thankful to be in Central Florida. The business environment here is conducive to continued economic growth, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.
