April 2025 | Michael Fechter
Mary Usategui was just 25 in 2008 when she was hired as controller at Miami’s newly formed Professional Bank. The boutique bank’s relatively small staff meant taking on additional roles as needed, so Usategui soon had human resources, accounting, IT, finance and operations all reporting to her.
She didn’t find it a burden, recognizing the chance to learn more about building a bank into a success.
“I was able to see all the inner workings of what it takes to build a bank from scratch — everyone rolling up their sleeves and learning something new,” she says. “I really enjoyed the process of building something. … I said, ‘One day I’m going to do this.’”
That day came last month, when BankMiami opened its doors for the first time with Usategui as its CEO and president. It is Miami’s first de novo bank since Professional. To get here, Usategui and her team had to develop a three-year business plan in order to secure state and FDIC approval, raise $32.5 million in escrow funding, and cement policies for loans, investments and other operations. They had to assemble a board of directors that includes two former bank CEOs.
A confluence of events in August 2023 told her it was time to try to realize her dream or face living with regret.
Seacoast Bank had bought Professional Bank the previous year, but then decided to pivot away from the “bespoke tailored solutions” that Usategui says helped Professional Bank grow into a publicly traded institution with $3 billion in assets. Many of her colleagues found themselves available for work. Similar bank sales and consolidations created a void in the market for a boutique bank.
“Whoever comes into this market to focus on that bespoke solution banking style will really benefit,” she remembers thinking. “I really felt bullish on the opportunity.”
Miami used to have a half-dozen “high-touch and high-tech” banks to serve businesses and their people who “are not typically W-2 earners,” Usategui says. “They have their own corporations, complicated balance sheets. That was what we did really well” at Professional Bank, “taking a deeper dive into their whole financial position and identify/underwrite unique opportunities for them.”
But as the city’s economy boomed, drawing people from Chicago, New York and Latin America, those banks disappeared. A 0%-interest period followed, making profitability more challenging and sapping the entrepreneurial drive to open a new bank.
That created “a unique opportunity to really fill that void,” she says. “Now more than ever, we need another option that can really provide that customized, tailored approach.” She was able to reassemble significant parts of the Professional Bank team — all with equity stakes.
In addition to the market conditions, Usategui had personal motivations. Her stepfather, former SunTrust and Coconut Grove Bank CFO Lynn Cambest, was dying of cancer. The two had long talked of working together on her de novo bank goal. He helped prepare the business plan and FDIC and state applications, securing approval last August.
Cambest died last September at age 80. “I’m very grateful for the time I got to spend with him doing this,” Usategui says.