By Christina Georgacopoulos – Reporter, Tampa Bay Business Journal
Jul 19, 2024
Amanda Stevens, incoming CEO at Raymond James Bank
Amanda Stevens knows the boxy, two-story office building that houses Raymond James Bank in St. Petersburg could use a revamp. But the bank itself — a linchpin of Raymond James Financial and a control center that touches some of the financial giant’s most critical functions — will remain unchanged when Stevens takes her post as CEO in October.
“We might get new carpet,” Stevens, who is currently the bank’s chief operating and strategy officer, jokes. “But this is not the kind of situation where there needs to be major change. You don’t want to screw it up, right?”
Stevens’ appointment as CEO will unfold alongside leadership changes in Raymond James Financial’s (NYSE: RJF) other three main divisions when Chief Financial Officer Paul Shoukry takes his post as firmwide chief executive.
The Raymond James organization is notoriously conservative. Its strategy does not shift on the whims of the market, and changes in management are few and far between. With $40 billion in assets and only 400 employees, Raymond James Bank is “small but mighty,” Stevens said. It was founded in the early 90s, but nearly half of its growth in assets has occurred since she joined in 2018.
Despite its limited headcount, the bank has expanded in scope, with new programs and services for the 8,700 financial advisers that make up Raymond James’ mainstay wealth management business. The bank also approves financing for deals in Raymond James’ investment banking group, participates in large corporate syndicated loans, and, more recently, has ventured into alternative investing with a private credit division.
“On a day-to-day basis, we’re always looking at strategy and what we can do better,” Stevens said.
Stevens recently sat down for an exclusive interview with the Tampa Bay Business Journal. She shared how the bank has evolved alongside the 60-year-old firm, how decisions are made across its complementary businesses, what’s in store for a new private credit division launched earlier this year, and how it has shifted in the changing banking environment.
Other big-name wirehouses have captive banks, which isn’t unique in the industry. What sets Raymond James Bank apart?
One of our strengths is that we’re a small organization. Although we’re really big in terms of asset size, we can make decisions quicker than some of those larger organizations.
We’re nimble, and we’ve invested a lot in automation. For example, we can process a securities-based loan in 12 minutes from the time an adviser says, ‘Yes, we’re going to do it,’ sends it through, and we book it in our system. It’s a very fast turnaround. From an operational perspective, we’re very efficient.
The bank supports functions firmwide, and it’s a big operation. How are decisions made? What does collaboration with other divisions look like?
We have a lot of touchpoints within the organization. [Current CEO Steve Raney] is really the glue that holds it all together. He’s on the executive committee at Raymond James and, in his new role, will oversee the bank as executive chairman, and TriState Capital and Raymond James Trust will report to him. He knows the other organizations really well and ties in all of those groups. An example of that is the private credit group we just started.
That’s a partnership between our investment banking division, Raymond James Bank, and Eldridge, an outside sponsor. But Steve pulled that together. After working with the investment banking group, he saw the need.
Private credit gained a lot of attention in 2023. That division launched earlier this year. Tell us about that.
Over the past six months, a number of banks have gotten into private credit. There are credit transactions out there that are just a bit over our risk profile, being that we are conservative. They’re more leveraged than what we want to put directly on our balance sheet. But there are groups like Eldridge that know credit really, really well and are willing to take a greater interest in the loan and take any potential losses but also take a little bit more upside if things go well.
What do those deals look like? Are they big corporate loans for middle-market companies or commercial real estate?
They’re middle-market companies. We’ve looked at around 60 deals so far, and there are a couple in the pipeline as far as the ones that we’re actually trying to move forward. But you have to look at a lot of deals to get something that fits within your risk matrix. A lot of the companies are either growing, or they’re relatively new to the market but have an experienced management team, or they’re a bit more leveraged than what we would typically do. There’s always some story behind these types of loans.
Unlike traditional banking, where you can vet a deal and know pretty quickly if it fits your profile and appetite. These take a lot more time.
You joined Raymond James Bank as chief operating and strategy officer in 2018. What does a day look like for you?
I cover bank operations, including loans and deposits, project management and data governance, and IT. I’ve got many different roles within the bank–and I have great people. I’m bringing them together to come up with the prioritizations and the vision. On a day-to-day basis, we meet with many different people to make a lot of different decisions.
Over the previous year, we were working on developing an enhanced savings program product. That took up a chunk of our time.
Was that the first new product the bank had rolled out in a while?
No, I would say we’ve done a lot. We listen to our financial advisers. They tell us what they’d like to see. That’s how the bank has evolved over time.
We started out very small 30 years ago, and the whole focus was to invest excess cash that the brokerage held. But along the way, somebody said it would be great if we did securities-based loans, and then mortgages, and then we added international services. So, there are a lot of things that have evolved from what our financial advisers tell us.
The enhanced savings program was one of them. Paul Reilly and Paul Shoukry — to their complete credit — were early to that. They started to wonder if liquidity would be a concern at some point. We worked on the product for 18 months and happened to launch it in March, right as the liquidity crisis happened.
Again, we only have about 10 people that support 28,000 accounts. It’s all automated; it’s easy, and it has a great rate. So once that was made available, the funds just came pouring in.
That program coincided with a monumental shift in the banking landscape. How did the bank’s strategy change around that time? As an interest rate-sensitive institution, what were the biggest challenges?
Fortunately, Raymond James’ strategy has never been to take any sort of bets on interest rates. We, like a lot of other institutions, built up large securities portfolios [during the prior two years], but we went really short and didn’t take the bet that interest rates were going to stay where they were. A lot of banks have had to deal with big markdowns on their securities, but we didn’t have that issue.
Our strategy all along has been to have a fortress balance sheet. That allowed us to not panic at a time when others were because deposits were flowing out the door. We were able to calmly look at the situation and assess what to do. We paused loan purchases where we could and made a couple of other strategic decisions along those lines. Later on, we went back into the market and it was fine.
As a management team, we were able to pivot quickly. Fortunately, we had set ourselves up well in the beginning, so it wasn’t a crisis situation. It was more ‘Hey, there’s some volatility in the market. Let’s meet a bit more frequently and make sure everybody’s comfortable.’ And we made decisions from there.
Leadership is changing firmwide, including in the C-suite with CFO Paul Shoukry. He will be only the fourth CEO in Raymond James’ 60-year history, so leadership changes are rare.
We have very in-depth succession planning. We go pretty deep into the organization and talk about succession planning every year. That’s one of our strengths.
And you’re not recruiting from outside the organization; is that by design?
Sometimes, you have to recruit from the outside, but fortunately, in this situation, it was all internal, which is really important. Raymond James is unique. It’s a large organization with a wonderful culture, but learning takes time. I’ve been here for six years and have been able to take a long time to really listen and understand how things work, how things get done, and the culture of conservatism.
How was the experience of getting situated in your role?
Not only do you have to learn how the bank operates, but so much of what we do is on the broker-dealer side and working with our financial advisers and the other parts of the firm. Steve Raney assigned me to several committees so I could get to know other leaders.
I was able to take that and then make improvements where it made sense and in the right time frame. We’ve changed some things from an operational standpoint. You have to take a step back and reevaluate processes as you grow. When I started, the bank had $23 billion in assets; now we’re at $40 billion. We worked with our IT partners to invest in automation and make things more efficient so we could serve this level of assets with so few people. That’s really the only way we can get that done.
I imagine there’s a lot of excitement behind the scenes for the upcoming leadership changes.
There is, and I think that happens whenever you have fresh eyes on things. It’s always nice to step back and look at things from a different perspective.
The fresh changes that have occurred at the firm and the bank gives everybody a little bit more energy, a little bit more excitement. And it provides opportunities for a lot of different people. As I move up into my position, we’re promoting two people—two women. There’s a lot of excitement around that. That provides new opportunities for the people who report to them.
What do you make of the growth of financial services in this region? How has that factored into recruiting?
Tampa has a lot of talent. It’s nice to have different financial services in the area because we do tend to swap expertise. Overall, what I’m really excited about is the universities that we have. The talent that we have right in our backyard — that’s going to help us in the future.
The challenge for the Tampa Bay area is going to be housing. Having a child who just graduated from University of Tampa and has her first job, that has been really challenging.
Raymond James has been called ‘the only Wall Street firm not on Wall Street.’ Miami has always been seen as the financial center of the South. Do you think Tampa is living up to its reputation as an emerging financial center?
I think we’re close, and this firm is a great place to start your career.
Closer look
Name, title: Amanda Stevens, chief operating and strategy officer, incoming CEO (October), Raymond James Bank
Education: B.A., accounting and finance, Michigan State University, 1998.
Bucket list item: To run a half-marathon in every state, with 38 completed.
Before joining Raymond James: 25 years in financial services. Former chief financial officer at USAmeriBancorp Inc. and executive in Crowe’s financial services group
Licensed: Florida CPA
Early life: it was spent on a dairy farm in Michigan, which her family still owns.