First Person

The offer was from Asian American Bank. This bank was founded by a group of Asian American non-bank professionals who wanted to provide better banking services for Boston’s growing Asian community. In the 1990s, the Asian population was one of Massachusetts fastest growing groups, increasing by more than 65 percent over the decade. Chinatown was expanding, and a growing number of Asians were moving into the suburbs of Boston. However, this thriving community was underserved by mainstream banks. Most Boston banks did not have Chinese speaking employees, and many were insensitive to the needs of newer Asian immigrants who were unfamiliar with the U.S. banking system. Moreover, the standardized approaches of many large financial institutions presented challenges for Asian immigrants who had not yet established bank references or credit scores. Boston’s Asian immigrant community was struggling to find the credit and banking services it needed. To meet this demand, Asian American Bank opened its doors on August 11, 1993. By the time I received the phone call about joining the bank in 2002, the bank had grown to over $100 million in assets and had a strong base of customers in the Asian community. The bank was offering me the job of CEO with a mandate from the board of directors to grow the Bank at a faster pace and to inject a healthy dose of professionalism into this home-grown institution. It was an intriguing proposition. The appeal of getting my hands on something different was strong, and I was inspired by this challenge to help revitalize a small community bank. I reflected, too, on my own experience immigrating to this country from Hong Kong, and I saw an opportunity to help others in their journey. Ultimately, the decision was not that difficult, and I soon signed up for the next phase of my career. My first order of business was to reorganize the Bank. If we were going to meet the challenge of serving Boston’s growing Asian population, we needed to become stronger, faster, and more flexible. So, we allocated more people to the business development office and upgraded our branch manager positions. We streamlined our credit approval process. We developed better tools for monitoring and tracking our business. We closed unprofitable branch locations, and we redirected resources to Quincy, Massachusetts, to serve its emerging Asian population, the largest outside of Boston. The second order of business was to reinforce the importance of customer service for our bank. With a large percentage of new immigrant customers, our success depended on our ability to provide personalized service and to build trust. We instituted regular customer service training for our front line staff and standard performance reviews of tellers and customer service representatives. We created a Finding New Challenges in Chinatown