A new commercial business bank in Tucson has its eyes on the local guys.
The WaFd Bank Southern Arizona Commercial Center opened earlier this month at 8001 N. Oracle Road with a goal of increasing lending in Southern Arizona to support the recent spate of investor activity and business expansion in the region.
Formerly known as Washington Federal, the bank has been around for more than 100 years and is ranked as the 10th best capitalized in the country.
“We are big enough to matter, yet small enough to care,” said Mike Brown, WaFd’s Arizona president. “We are poised to help Southern Arizona businesses grow in this new decade.”
WaFd has eight branches in the Tucson market but the new center will strictly focus on business transactions with services such as business lines of credit, commercial real estate, acquisition financing and treasury management.
The so-called “hyper-local” banking model was first launched in 2015 in the Phoenix market and has financed everything from a tech university expansion to family farms.
“When we looked at how to best support economic development in Southern Arizona, it quickly became clear to us we wanted the effort to be a wholly local one, meaning making an investment in Pima County and with Pima County banking specialists directly,” Brown said.
The decision makers are located in the market and the CEO of the Seattle-based bank doesn’t hesitate to hop on a plane to tour a family-owned business and see where his investment is going.
“Our customers don’t typically come see us, we go see our customers here or in Nogales, Yuma, Safford, Benson, Douglas and Sierra Vista,” said Steve Ponzo, a local senior relationship manager. “A lot of banks currently are pulling people out of the market and managing from Phoenix. We’re putting real bankers on the line, locally.”
Aside from having bankers who are intimately familiar with the nuances of the Southern Arizona economy, the turnaround time on transactions is much faster than with centralized banks, Ponzo said.
The bank’s eagerness to partner with family-owned businesses caught the attention of Tubac-based Ciruli Brothers, importers of fruits and vegetables with operations in the U.S. and Mexico.
“Since we founded in 1967, we have met several presidents of banks but have only met one CEO of a bank and that’s WaFd’s,” said Chris Ciruli, the company’s chief operating officer. “To have a CEO fly down and meet with a family business is unheard of.”
In the past decade, most banks have pulled out of the border regions due to concerns about money laundering and complicated regulations.
“It has been very difficult for border communities to get financing and establish relationships with large banks,” Ciruli said. “To see them buy out border banks is very important to family and mid-size businesses.”
WaFd has several customers along the border who operate in both countries, from customs broker, produce distributors and warehousing operations, said Jill Malick, another senior relationship manager.
“We are invested here and really understand the local economy,” she said. “The decisions are made locally and not by someone who has never visited the local market.”
While there are other banks in the region that have programs for small businesses and even small banks that work with mom-and-pop operations, WaFd’s combination of local focus and being well-financed is a welcome option.
“We like the local aspect of their bank, even though they’re a big institution based out of Seattle, their banks can make the decision locally,” said Michael Guymon, vice president of the Tucson Metro Chamber. “As a chamber, we like the local banks and the localized banks and we also like the large banks.
“For us be be a grown-up community we need to have a diversity of options for our big guys and our startups.”
