Q. Most of your banking experience has been in the South. Why did you come to Hawai'i?

A. I was leaving a chief financial officer post of a $14 billion bank, $2 billion market cap and was really looking for the next logical role for me, which was an operating role. That's something that was available and American Savings Bank was seeking. The two other things that were attractive was one, (ASB president and chief executive officer) Connie Lau, the leader. The jobs I've enjoyed most have been led by a strong leader with similar backgrounds to her. Second, my family was very attracted to Hawai'i. Having lived in different places in the South, we thought it would be a great thing to experience something different.

Q. Now that you've been here for a few months, what are your impressions?

A. This is my fourth bank and every bank is different and focuses on different things and has different issues. Hawai'i, surprisingly, and South Carolina are not too dissimilar. South Carolina is a smaller state, it is heavily influenced by tourism, has beautiful beaches and not a lot of big corporations. It's a better mix of people here, ethnically, so it's a great thing for my kids to see. My kids are part Cuban so it's nice for them to live in not such a homogenous place.

Q. How is American Savings different?

A. Two things specifically. One is all banks like to use the tag line, "We're a community bank." Having been in four banks, I really feel that ASB is community oriented, and that's led by Connie. She has a real passion for the state of Hawai'i and its heritage. The second thing that's different is ASB is migrating from a thrift to a bank. A lot of people that are not involved with financial services don't understand the vast difference with that. But thrifts historically focused just on mortgages, like for your house, and on savings-type products, like money markets and CDs. So what Connie has done with her vision is about six years ago she really started to transform American Savings Bank into a commercial bank, much more like a Bank of Hawaii or First Hawaiian, and there's been a lot of progress in the commercial banking area.

Q. What are your responsibilities?

A. My primary responsibility is to support Connie and to help the organization move forward as we continue to convert to a bank. We want to participate in the normal growth of the products that we have been selling historically. But we also see a lot of areas of opportunity that we have not tapped yet. They don't come quickly. You have to build out certain areas. We feel good about our future prospects within what we call business banking, which is the smaller businesses of Hawai'i. Hawai'i really is a business-banking type of state.

Q. Have you had to change your approach to your job since you moved here?

A. My first 60 days I've tried to be observant, be a listener and really digest the company and build camaraderie with my teammates and sort of gauge the state of the company. Mainland companies are pretty intense and people can be a little bit more vocal. It seems here that there are certainly some people like that, but in general the society is not as vocal on certain issues or they just handle things in a different way. A lot of people have explained that you not only need to listen to people, but you need to look to their visual signs and that they may not speak up as much as you're used to.

Q. American Savings has been involved in a case of alleged fraud. Are you aware of the case and were you brought in to improve the image of the bank?

A. I don't have a lot to add on that because honestly I know very little. I'm really focused on improving the core operations. I can tell you that I was not brought here for that reason. I think the core reason I'm here is there's a big opportunity at ASB and Connie's been very successful in that role and likely would have continued leading that, but with the prior gentleman running HEI retiring, her time is just split now. On the issues, this is my fourth or fifth public company and those issues unfortunately happen when you're in business and when you're dealing with consumers. I have had similar situations like that at my other companies and I can also tell you that in life, when it rains it pours. You go through years with nothing like that happening and all of a sudden two or three happen in a year. I don't really think that those things are tied to each other, and I don't really think that they are indicative of any systemic issues here at ASB.

Q. What are your challenges?

A. We have a 2 percent unemployment rate with very strong financial institutions here. To be the best that you can be and to grow out these certain areas, how do you build the talent out? Everyone is seeking the best employees on the Island and you may have so many players that don't know banking. When you're on the Mainland, it's easy to recruit. So one is the talent issue. Another challenge is just the growth. The state of Hawai'i, a great thing is it's more stable than the average U.S. state, but some of the growth characteristics are not as high. Where I come from, North Carolina and Florida, there is a lot of in-migration of people, a lot of births and a lot of opportunities to do business. Unfortunately for the banks here to prosper, you are either growing at the market average, which is maybe 3 percent, or you're stealing share from the others, or you are expanding to the Mainland or to Asia, as you have seen Bank of Hawaii and First Hawaiian do over the years. So there are some very interesting business challenges to grow your business in Hawai'i.

Q. Any ideas that you can talk about?

A. The opportune thing for ASB is we have been in business for about 82 years and have been pretty focused on mortgages and on savings-type products. We have our fair share of challenges, but when you think about the other institutions, the credit unions, First Hawaiian and Bank of Hawaii, they're very successful and largely built out. So the opportunity for us is we're not really yet faced with that challenge of, "Do we go to the Mainland or do we go west?" We really have an opportunity to build out some of these lines and get what we call more "share of wallet" from customers that may have one product with us. They may have gotten a mortgage from us in the past years, but have done their banking at Bank of Hawaii or at a credit union. We really think there is ample opportunity to build out for some time.

Q. What are your goals?

A. I'm just committed to helping move this company forward every day when I come in. My personal goal is three and five years down the road I'd like to see tangible progress, like Connie has been able to do in our commercial area. Ten percent of our assets are related to commercial-type activities and had she not had the initiative or the leadership to move that forward, it never would have happened. We're earmarking a couple of opportunities that we think are available to us and I just want to see them through and make the company successful. Whatever happens with Tim Schools will happen, but the company is really more important.

Reach Curtis Lum at culum@honoluluadvertiser.com.