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InterBank President and CEO C.K. Lee runs one of the highest-performing banks in the country.
The $4.7 billion, Oklahoma City-based bank subsidiary of Olney Bancshares of Texas Inc. has produced a pretax, return on average assets of 3.30% or higher in each of the last five quarters and an S-Corp. adjusted ROAA of 2.60% or higher during each of those periods. The latter is more than 2x the ROAA generated by the community bank aggregate during that time frame.
In the latest edition of Tales from Top Performers, a series featuring conversations with executives at high-performing banks, Lee discusses the bank's philosophy and how it positioned the institution to thrive through the changing interest rate environment, generate strong performance and recruit top talent. The executive also discussed his prior experience as a regulator and investment banker, and shared his outlook for credit quality and the M&A landscape.
GREATEST OPPORTUNITY OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
Capitalize on strong organic growth opportunities
"The largest opportunity is to continue to lean into the growth that we're seeing in our region and be able to not only find but continue to find the good loans with the good sponsors that we bank, but also to fund them," Lee said.
GREATEST CHALLENGE OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
The impact that trade policies could have on the macro environment
"The rebalancing of the terms of trade and the geopolitical tensions that we're seeing, they don't affect us directly, but they affect the operating environment. They affect the decisions that our customers make and their customers make. And so some of that will filter back up on to us," Lee said. "We just want to make sure we see it a long way off and that we understand what's driving our growth. And if there's any slowdown in any of the factors that drive our growth that we're catching that early and not getting in a situation where we keep loaning money into a situation that may be deteriorating."
