President, Personal Banking, UMB Financial
No one will ever accuse Dana Abraham of being afraid of change.
Since taking over as president of personal banking at UMB Financial three years ago, Abraham has transformed the way the Kansas City, Mo., company delivers services to and interacts with its clients.
Abraham has torn down the walls that once separated the two business lines she oversees — consumer banking and private wealth management — and merged their leadership teams to encourage more active collaboration between the units.
She has eliminated the traditional tellers and replaced them with universal bankers who have been trained to evaluate and underwrite consumer loans. And her team continued to revamp the bank’s wealth management offerings, most recently launching an online investing tool for high-net-worth households that will soon be available to households with as little as $25,000 to invest.
The moves were all aimed at providing better service to the bank’s retail clients — associates are trained to prioritize clients’ interests above sales goals — and the results have been promising. Personal banking is among the fastest-growing business lines with the $21 billion-asset UMB, with more than 60% of its new business coming from existing relationships. Consumer loan pipelines, meanwhile, are larger than they have ever been, as more and more of its universal bankers have become been certified to evaluate loans.
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Abraham’s group is responsible for $1.4 billion of loans, $10.4 billion of assets under management, $60 billion of assets under administration and $5.2 billion of deposit balances.
As one of the highest-ranking women at UMB and the only female running a major business line, Abraham is particularly cognizant of her responsibility to help advance the careers of women, both inside and outside UMB.
She is active in UMB’s Women’s Group, often coordinating mentoring events for women associates, and last year she connected the UMB group with an organization that helps high school girls set career paths. The initial six-hour event, focused on career opportunities in financial services, was so successful that UMB is now looking to sponsor similar events annually.
Externally, Abraham chairs the executive women’s council of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and sits on the board of the Central Exchange, a networking group whose mission is to cultivate the next generation of women leaders in the Kansas City area.
