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This week, we sat down with Dino D'Auria, executive vice president and chief banking officer at Silvergate Bank. One of EDC's newest investors, Silvergate Bank is a San Diego-based community bank that serves individuals and businesses across industries including manufacturing, defense, property management, real estate investment and many more.

1) Please tell us what your company/organization does.

Silvergate Bank has four main lines of business: Mortgage Warehouse Lending, Correspondent Mortgage Lending, Real Estate Construction and Investor Financing, and – my division – Business Lending and our Branch network.  We also have an on-line portal that serves our Fintech clients for Treasury Management services.

In our Business Banking group, we primarily serve growing, privately held companies or Community Service Organizations (Not for Profit) by helping them position their balance sheets for growth and assist them in efficient and cost effective cash management.

Many of our clients come to us after having trouble working with larger banks, because they did not fit.  We take the time to teach clients how to properly report their financial statements and communicate in “banker-speak” to enable them to get the financial services needed to grow.  Some examples of our work:

• A privately held company that rents film production equipment was piecing together many small loans at typically high rates of interest to finance their 25 percent year-over-year growth. Silvergate Bank was able to consolidate these loans into two loans at a more favorable interest rate and reduce the monthly debt service by 25 percent. This allowed more working capital to be preserved in the company, which can be leveraged to support his continued growth.
• A privately held company that sells packaging material was using UPS to finance its shipments of product.  By coaching the company on maintaining supporting net worth in his company, we were able to replace this expensive funding source with a Formula Line of Credit cutting his financing costs by 50 percent and setting him up to grow his business.

2) What are some advantages to being located/doing business in San Diego?

San Diego is a close-knit business community. Our team is able to bring other professionals as resources for our clients through our networking activities.  The economy is diverse and provides a stable base for entrepreneurs to grow their companies and have the confidence that things will be good in the future.

3) San Diego is full of dynamic companies, firms and service providers influencing global trends and innovation. Pick another San Diego company that is at the top of its game.

Gap Intelligence is a dynamic marketing research company that is very progressive in using technology and creating a positive dynamic culture. 

4) What do you anticipate for your company in five years? What do you anticipate for San Diego?

We expect to grow Business Banking to be an equal share of our balance sheet as our other lines of business.  We also plan to expand into Orange County, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire so there are plenty of growth opportunities at the bank.

San Diego will continue to positively progress as it has over the last 20 years.