One of the highlights of Bonnie Lee's career leading the $7.4 billion-asset Hanmi Financial was ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in December to celebrate the Los Angeles bank's 40th anniversary.
Hanmi Bank is the second-largest Korean American bank in the U.S. and Lee became the bank's first female CEO in 2019. She has spent the ensuing four years working to strengthen the bank's balance sheet and grow its deposit base. Though the bank has long served the Korean American community, Hanmi has expanded by reaching out to other minority populations and small businesses.
After the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March, Hanmi has taken what Lee called a "selective and disciplined approach to lending," focused on borrowers with long term deposit relationships at the bank. Still, higher deposit costs have impacted the bank's net interest income, a problem impacting most banks.
In the past year, Lee has focused on the bank's Korean companies initiative, which aims at capturing market share from the growing contingent of U.S.-based subsidiaries of large Korean manufacturers and conglomerates. Hanmi initially targeted auto-parts companies that support the Korean carmakers Hyundai and Kia.
But much like the spread of K-pop culture, Lee found that Korean companies have made huge inroads into the U.S.
"Korean companies are so broad-based now: entertainment, education, K-beauty, even some of the real estate investments that they made," said Lee. "They're mostly continuing or going into mainstream U.S. businesses and industries."
The Korean companies strategy contributed to a 23% jump in loan balances in 2022. Hanmi's assets rose to $7.4 billion last year, from $6.9 billion in 2021.
Lee also is focused on the bank's core business of serving its local communities. Though Hanmi has always catered to first-generation small-business owners, those companies have grown and are passing the baton to the next generation, many of whom are second-generation, American-born women, she said.
Though Lee grew up in Chicago, she moved to California with her parents in the late 1980s largely because they didn't like the weather, she said. Lee's parents were opening a wholesale fruits and vegetables business when they first landed in L.A., and, like many immigrants, went to a community bank to get financing. At the time, she was in her mid-20s and went with them to meet the local banker.
"My parents got the financing and then right after that, I saw there was an advertisement from one of the Korean banks advertising for a management trainee position," she said.
She applied and was one of three people, picked out of roughly 50, for the management-trainee program. The experience gave Lee insight into how important banking is to local communities.
"It provided me a front-row seat to the needs of small businesses — especially the many challenges faced by multi-ethnic small-business owners," Lee said. "The experience shaped the way I see the role of community banks in supporting both the local and broader economy."
Lee says one of her most important jobs as CEO is to create a positive corporate culture for the bank's roughly 625 employees. Hanmi has several internal programs aimed at giving back to the community through volunteerism and at helping employees gain more skills and rise through the ranks with credit trainee and management leadership programs.
"Having the right people is a key to success for any organization," she said, noting that statistics show that 60% of employees leave their company because of their immediate boss. "As a leader, I believe it is important to bring positive energy to the organization to foster a positive culture. To do that, I focus on leading by example and showing how much I value good communication. My hope is that I have inspired another generation of bankers to establish careers that allow them to serve their communities."
