Interim president Poelker looks for best way forward for troubled bank
The new interim president at CertusBank, John Poelker, spent his first several days “out and about meeting an awful lot of our employees,” he said. His mission in the first few weeks is fact-finding and research to determine the troubled bank’s true state of affairs and best way forward.
The 40-year banking veteran was appointed last week after Milton Jones, Walter Davis and Angela Webb were terminated from their respective posts as executive chairman, CEO and president.
He said the board assured him that customer-facing operations are “solid.”
“I know what questions to ask, but I clearly don’t have all the answers,” Poelker said – but he has a strong reputation for finding those answers.
He has taken the helm of several troubled banks, getting credit for what he was able to accomplish even when some of those banks eventually failed. His most recent executive post was as CFO of State Bank Financial in Atlanta, which successfully executed the kind of troubled bank-buying strategy that was Certus’ original plan, and which he has accomplished more than once.
“I’ve seen every iteration of what needs to be fixed, so I have this sort of playbook,” he said. “It’s important to know how do you find the priorities, find what to focus on absolutely, what you have to leave alone.”
Five days into the job at CertusBank, Poelker had identified some major issues. He said there was already intense focus on assessing the quality of the bank’s loan portfolio in order to stem the tide of credit losses and avoid surprises.
Moreover, “there’s clearly an expense structure here that is very high, lots of expense relative to the current level of income in the organization.” He said he favors looking at each line of business and each market over across-the-board expense cuts.
He acknowledged that the bank’s heavy investment in branch locations “absolutely” needed to be addressed.
“The challenge that we have is that the infrastructure, including investment in real estate, was built to accommodate a much larger bank that was in the original plan. Whether we can accomplish that remains to be seen.”
Large charitable commitments have been another highly visible expense, and though Poelker said he is still learning what all of those are, “challenges and earnings issues should have very little impact on our commitments to our communities.”
He said it was too soon to discuss leadership plans.
“My commitment to the board was, I’ll be here as long as it makes sense. The focus over the next three months is to make sure I and the board understand exactly what needs to be addressed and help the board determine long-term needs in terms of management structure.”
Poelker said he created a video message to employees over the weekend.
“My message to our employees is that essentially my job here is to move forward toward objectives we’ve had since the beginning. They need to focus on their day-to-day work. I’ve clearly sent the message that I need to hear from them.”
