The Most Powerful Women in Banking: No. 23, Jill Castilla, Citizens Bank of Edmond

Jill Castilla runs a community bank with a single physical location, but she has carved out a national profile.

Since 2022, Jill Castilla — CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond in suburban Oklahoma City — has traveled quarterly to Washington as part of the Federal Reserve's Federal Advisory Council. She represents financial institutions in the central bank's Kansas City district, which includes five states and parts of two others. Castilla brings the perspective of community lenders like Citizens, a bank that employs 60 people and reports $388 million in assets.

Hear her speak at The Most Powerful Women in Banking Conference in New York City, October 22-23.

Castilla has pushed for wider implementation of FedNow, the Federal Reserve's one-year-old network for real-time, anytime payments. The network is essential for community banks "to engage in a global marketplace and the domestic financial system," Castilla said.

Other important issues include the substance and frequency of call reports, an urgent matter after Silicon Valley Bank's failure, Castilla said. The banker discussed how community bank classifications of some of their deposits and loans can differ from those of larger lenders. For example, a loan could be classified as "commercial real estate" rather than as "commercial & industrial."

Castilla, whose three years on the advisory council ends in December, said she gained from conversations with power brokers like Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America. 

"You would never have Brian Moynihan and Jill Castilla in the same room having a conversation about overdrafts," she said. "Those conversations impacted me and hopefully impacted some of the other participants."

Also beyond the reach of metropolitan Oklahoma City is Roger, a digital bank that Citizens launched last August to serve unbanked members of the military. With a team that includes her husband, Marcus Castilla — a retired Army lieutenant colonel — Castilla said in early August that Roger has opened deposit accounts for about 1,000 service members and their families.

Operating with a shoestring marketing and advertising budget of $2,400, Roger has hit milestones like joining the Air Forces Financial Network, "which gives us access to all ATMs on military installations throughout the world," Castilla said.

Inspired by Castilla's own experience as a teenage military enrollee whose savings were wiped out by a family member, Roger lets 17-year-olds open an account without a cosigner. Roger will not begin offering loans "until we develop a financial literacy program that we're really proud of," Castilla said.

As Citizens works with military members across the world, Castilla remains a visible presence in Edmonds. The banker personally knows many of her clients, she said, and is a member of several local boards, including the Port Authority of Oklahoma City, Urban Land Institute Oklahoma advisory board and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

 Castilla grew up in Oklahoma and enlisted in the Army to pay for college, where she worked as a civil engineer, technical engineer and construction surveyor. After college, she was a staff manager at the Federal Reserve's Kansas City office, which launched her banking career.

Castilla said she climbed in her career by developing a curiosity for the overall operations of a bank, something that she would recommend rising bankers do.

"Participate in audits and examinations as much as you can," Castilla said. "Understand how your bank makes money."