Gabriel Lee is vice president in charge of business banking at American Savings Bank. He also is on the board of numerous nonprofits, including the local chapters of the American Red Cross and the Boy Scouts.

Q. How would you characterize the state of the economy as well as the banking industry?

A. Right now, our customers have been affected, but our portfolio is pretty stable. The reason is we underwrite our loans more on the cash flow of companies, versus being asset-based. It's more based on the value of the assets, and so when you underwrite off cash flow, you look at historical cash flows and you look at the management's ability to ride out the good and bad times. Businesses are not like consumers where they have a steady stream of income. Their cash flow is always fluctuating, and so a lot of our customers are pretty seasoned after they went through the last slow period.

Q. Do you have to do a lot of monitoring and have personal contact with your customers?

A. Commercial banking has to do with seeing the customers a lot, understanding their cash flows, and (with) most of our customers we see financial statements on a quarterly basis and that enables us to see the actual results in comparison to what they tell us. The other thing is that our commercial banking officers in the various industry groups become part of the industry. You know the players, you know the strong players, the weak players, and when you become part of an industry, you can anticipate things a lot faster. So you have to be active in your industry, as well as seeing your customers.

Q. What are some of the concerns that you hear from your customers?

A. Definitely it's the oil prices, the effect that they have on shipping, cost of goods sold. But I think it definitely will have an impact on consumer spending, if it hasn't had already. Food prices are definitely going to be affected by it, and it's high already, but it will be a little bit more dramatic as everything goes through the change. A lot of the manufacturers on the Mainland still are priced out with their cost of goods sold with the old energy costs. It's going to ripple through pretty quickly.

Q. Have you always been interested in banking?

A. Yes. I thought I was going to be more interested in consumer finance, but I ended up starting in consumer finance at Finance Factors and moved to small business at Hawaii National and the larger businesses at Bank of Hawaii. It ended up I liked doing the business lending more than the consumer lending.

Q. What brought you to American Savings?

A. American Savings had acquired Bank of America's Hawai'i operation six months before I joined them, and they were looking to have someone head it up and give it some direction beyond small business. My strength is more the large corporate and middle market.

Q. As a banker, what do you do during tough times?

A. For us, it's being able to meet with our customers more because the more you know, the more flexible you can be, knowing that they are taking actions and even though their financials might look bad this quarter, that they have put a plan in place to get them through. It'll be two or three quarters down the line, but you know it will happen. If you know management, then you know that they've been through this and that they can turn it around.

Q. Are there things that American Savings offers that are unique to its customers?

A. On the commercial banking side, where we have a strength is our corporate banking officers, our middle-market officers, as well as our small-business officers. We really try to be able to be more than just a loan officer. I would say more like a financial adviser. The other thing that we really do well is when we sit with the customer, we will tell them what we are willing to recommend for their credit request. So if they're requesting a line of credit and term loan, it's good for the customer to know what we are willing to recommend as the commercial banking officer versus you listening to the customer and you taking it back to the credit approval people and seeing what they come up with and it might be totally different from what the customer and the commercial banking officer were talking about in the first place.

Q. What makes a good leader?

A. You have to manage the generations a little different. The boomers versus the Gen X and the Gen Y. They are different, and you have to recognize that. The other thing is that you have to be able to listen to them. They know their customers and portfolio better than management, and when they're making recommendations, you really have to listen and recognize that their knowledge is pretty deep. You may have other knowledge that is more on the macro side about the economy than some other players, but they wouldn't be recommending things if they didn't have a good grasp of what they're doing.

Q. You are a proponent of networking. Why is that so important?

A. The networking side is definitely important on business development, but it also is very important when it comes down to supporting the community. The problem with networking is there's a lot of people that try to do networking and you can't "try" to do networking. Networking has to be part of your lifestyle, and you have to be able to do it pretty naturally, and you should be able to bring a lot to the table before you can expect anything. A lot of times, it's beyond just meeting people, it's making new friends. Networking, besides being able to assist the community and business development, a lot of times it's not just knowing a lot of people.

Q. You're on the boards of several community organizations. Why is that so important?

A. You have to be selective on the boards that you are on, and then it comes down to you have to have the passion for the boards as well as fitting them into your lifestyle. Each one has a unique mission, and a lot of it has to do with supporting the community. The support of the community, as well as the interaction with other board members, will definitely strengthen the relationships in town, because a leader definitely needs to have a good network of business relationships and personal relationships.

Q. What are your goals?

A. I like what I'm doing right now, and I would like to continue this. I also have commercial real estate, and when you're in the community and if you finance something or you see a building that you were a part of, it makes you feel really good that you're helping the community expand. For instance, if there was a building there and it gets knocked down and you financed a new building, that's something that you're going to see for the next 30 to 40 years and know that that business is supporting a lot of families. That's the really great part of the job, is you can see the end result and you also know that when you help expand a working capital line and give a business term loans and know that in their business plan they're going to be able to increase their staffing by another 10 employees and what the ripple effect has on the families of those 10 new employees, it's pretty significant to have a purpose and enjoy it.