 Aloha, and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday at two o'clock in downtown Halalulu in the Pioneer Plasm. We are a story about successful businesses and successful business people in Hawaii. There are successes here, despite the rhetoric to the contrary. Today we have one of those success stories from the Bank of Hawaii. Robin Kanashiro, who is the Vice President and Private Banking Manager of the Professional Services Group. Now, full disclosure, I used to work at the Bank of Hawaii many years ago and so we may reminisce a little bit during the show. But Robin, great to have you on the show. Thank you, Reg, I'm glad to be here. Good to see you. Now, you've been in the banking industry quite a while, but you were born and raised here, weren't you? Absolutely, born and raised. I've been in banking for about 20 years, a lot more than I thought I was. I'm losing a little bit more hair nowadays, but born and raised, like you said. I went to Punahua School for my entire high school career, and I attended University of Hawaii and graduated from the business school there. Very good. And then from the University of Hawaii, did you go right into banking or what did you do? Actually, well, like many, after about six months worth of going to the beach and surfing, I figured I'd also have a gainfully employed. So, really did not know what I really wanted to go into. I had a, you know, a Bachelor of Finance in International Banking, and, you know, going through college, I thought, well, you know, it'd be great to do the investment side of the bank and really do stock trading, be an investment banker. But, you know, really having roots here in Hawaii, there wasn't that many opportunities, I think. I would have to move to New York or LA, and really that wasn't me. I'm more of a local boy in my heart. So, actually just kind of fell into banking. There was a unique opportunity to join a small community bank in their training program. They were starting it up again. And, you know, just said, well, you know, might also try to have a finance degree. It was an interesting opportunity, and kind of fell into it, like many of you said. You know, the training program that a lot of banks have, particularly in the smaller community banks, are really valuable because you learn so much about banking in a fairly short order of time. And you get all the exposure to all the different departments. It's a great area to start your career. No, absolutely. And one thing I really enjoy about banking, you get to meet a lot of different people. I think I enjoy it most, is just learning, and getting exposed to different things, different people, different industries. And banking is wonderful for that. You get to learn from not only your peers, the people that you work with next to you, but definitely from your clients. Well, and that's what makes it so interesting, is that you do have a lot of different clients that are both individuals and businesses, you know. And you, in order to serve their needs, you really have to understand what they're going through and what their life is like to tailor the services. And it's a great way to, you know, learn how businesses operate. And that's great. So you were with the smaller bank, and then at some point you decided to join the Bank of Hawaii? So what happened was, I spent about eight, nine years there. And it being a community, small community bank, I loved it where your peers were about 200 strong, I think. So I knew my peers very personally and very much create a lot of friendships. And I just thought, well, you know, there was another opportunity to join a larger bank, and it was just, again, get a different level of experience and exposure. So I've been with Bank of Hawaii now for about six years, I'd say, now. My entire career, primarily on the corporate and commercial side of the bank until recently. But, you know, it was an opportunity, I think, several years ago to join Bank of Hawaii. Well, that's great. I, you know, and we're here to talk about you and not so much me, but I'm going to say that about 20 years ago, I was also at the Bank of Hawaii. And I had come a slightly different route. I had come from the Ernst & Young side and had joined the bank and working with Richard Dahl. And he had asked me if I would come in and help him in the international division area. So, you know, when I was at UH, I also was interested in international banking and was moving in that direction. I ended up getting an accounting degree, but that's another story. But I actually worked at the international division 20 years ago at the Bank of Hawaii. And back in those days, the bank was huge. Their footprint was all around the Pacific. And they had their fingers into a lot of different things. I think the bank's a little different now. It's kind of went through a little transformation. Absolutely. And again, not to date you at all, but, you know, Bank of Hawaii has really changed over the last 20 plus years. And it continues to change, and it has to, you know, with the advent of the financial crisis, a lot more regulation. But also, Hawaii is a very unique market, too. So, you have to constantly evolve right now at Bank of Hawaii. And hopefully, if you've seen some of our ads, it's really focusing on the bank of tomorrow, the bank for the tomorrow. Not only focusing on necessary product, but really those resources that people in Hawaii need. And, you know, one nice thing about Bank of Hawaii, we do have a lot of different services, a lot of different financial resources that we can compete with mainland banks, especially in this type of environment where technology is playing a huge role in how people do their finances, interact with banks, and really do their personal finance. You know, I think as the bank goes through its process of creating higher levels of focus and taking advantage of all the technology changes, I would say that the bank is significantly different today than it was 20 years ago. And I think the level of services that are being provided are faster, quicker, more reliable. I think there's a lot of very positives. I mean, do you get that sense? Absolutely. I mean, just up until several years ago, you could see how banking has evolved with a relatively short period of time, and that's an advent of technology, is that people are normally used to dealing with a bank in a brick-and-mortar type of setting. You know, walk into a bank, you know, stand in line and wait for a teller and do your transaction there. Now with the new generation, especially the Gen Y millennial generation, you know, many of them do not ever have to walk into the bank, and that's because of the advent of technology. You can use mobile banking, internet banking, ATMs now. I think I read a statistic earlier is that, you know, this Gen Y generation, all they know is the internet. That's what they grew up on, that's what they continue to evolve and utilize is how they interact with people, interacting with businesses, interact with the bank. You know, 71%, I believe, of millennials, you know, have used the internet to do their banking. And I have a couple of those millennials living, they're not living in my house anymore. One of them is the other one's in San Francisco, but it would be very unusual for them to have to go into a branch to get anything done because either they're available through the internet on their computers or on their iPhones. One way or another, they can take care of almost everything that needs to be done remotely. Absolutely. And for, it's an interesting time for us. You know, they have, you know, bank has to be aware of how to still service clients that are from the Babymore generation that are still utilizing our branch system and interacting with the bank through our traditional delivery channels. They enjoy standing in line. They enjoy that one-on-one relationship with the tellers or with one of the other bank employees. And we definitely want to make sure that we then feel comfortable and continue to provide that service. But those in their 20s and 30s do not have the time or the desire to have capacity to spend time in the bank. And that's where I think for Hawaii, it's a unique opportunity because we're such an isolated market where if we do it right and have that balance between technology and different delivery channels, along with that relationship banking that Hawaii people are so used to dealing with and feel comfortable with, it's a unique opportunity for not only Bank of Hawaii but all businesses. You know, I can see how that can be very unique, but I can also see where it could be a little challenging. I mean, the Baby Boomers, you know, as the old team at Cheers goes, you know, you like to go into a place where everybody knows your name and there's a comfort in that. But the new generation, they're not interested in that. They'd rather be doing it remotely. So that presents a challenge in how to build that relationship and make it stronger with them. And I guess the way to do that is through the technology. Absolutely. And that's connectivity. Especially, you know, you look at, you know, technology, it allows people to connect that is just in a different way, a different delivery channel. Good point. Especially for competition sense is that, you know, if I need to do banking and I'm used to using technology, I'm going to be inundated by, you know, the rocket mortgages of the world, the online platforms where really, I don't have to use a local bank in that sense either. So, like every business, you have to evolve. And that's where Bank of Hawaii is at now, is that really investing into our technology, but also evolving how we interact with those clients that do choose to interact with this on these different platforms, either through the traditional model, the online platform, or from a different sense are what we call a segmentation in a way where different specialized areas of the bank. Well, and I know the area of specialization we might touch on a little bit later in the second half of the show, but I wanted to also mention, full disclosure again, my youngest son, Robert Baker, is actually working in the IT department, and he's involved and I think managing to some degree the branch infrastructure that the bank is going through, and there's some upgrades and some changes there too. Absolutely. So the first thing for Ray into it was to introduce our new Ease ATMs. And what that is, is that it's similar to any other traditional ATM, but rather than having a client, if they're only going to do a simple, you know, the pot check deposit or a cash transaction, they can certainly use our more useful, more robust ATM model where you can stick a stack of checks, a stack of cash, and that could be the teller without the deposit slip. So it meets that client's demand for simplicity and speed, where they could again still have the model of going to our traditional branches or use our ATMs. See, and that's where the interesting uniqueness I guess comes in between maybe the baby boomers and the younger generation is that I still have a little bit of a challenge. Putting a check into a machine, okay, I can probably handle it, but putting cash into a machine, that's a little different, you know, and I'd much rather give it to a human and see that acknowledgement of receipt, you know. Ironically, I'm the same way. I'm caught in the middle. I'm not actually a baby boomer, but I'm definitely not the Gen Y. But the other ways we're doing it too is really other delivery channels, you know, mobile banking, and we were talking about a little bit earlier about taking a picture of your check and depositing that way, very much investing in our in-store branches. We have the most in-store branches in Hawaii, I think we have 17 now, really as a partnership with some of our larger grocery chains like Safeway. And again, meeting the client's needs and what necessarily how they would like to bank with the Bank of Hawaii versus how the bank expects people to. You know, we want to be more accessible, and that's the main thing, is that make sure that we focus on our clients versus the bank's model first. And so when you go to a grocery store every weekend to Safeway, you can do your banking there, so why not be where the clients are? Well, and that begs the question, at least in my mind, with these smart ATMs and the greater versatility that they offer and being able to take care of maybe a large percentage of basic banking transactions at what point can you even get more accessible by having more of these machines in different places? You know, not just Safeway, you don't have to have a full-blown branch there, maybe at some point you just need to have that smart ATM there. Absolutely, so I believe all of our branches now do have the smart ATMs including the in-store and then we have some other remote ones. And again, it's being where the clients are rather than having to have a brick-and-mortar branch on every single corner. We would love to do that, but it's not necessarily a good business model. Oh my gosh, the expense in having brick-and-mortar branches these days are just astronomical because not only do you have to have the building but then the land and then the employees, you have to have certain security protocols in place. There's a lot of expense in these brick-and-mortar locations. And even with our new brick-and-mortar branches, you'll see a different feel to it. I think your son's working on one of them now is that it's going to be the newest unveiling, I believe, is on middle of November, which is our ProCity branch. And it was already an existing brick-and-mortar branch almost twice the size that we were going to be unveiling. And really it's going to have a very different feel than the brick-and-mortar branches. It's going to have a much more open concept but also it is actually going to be more accessible in a way because you'll have the technology already built into the branches rather than only having these services. It's all working and talking and working well and it's fascinating and maybe one of these days you can come back or maybe bring some IT guys with you and then show us how all that works. But we need to take a short break. We'll be back in about 60 seconds and we're going to continue our conversation with Robin Kanashiro from the Bank of Hawaii and we're going to get a little bit more into the professional services group that he's more involved in on a day-to-day basis. So we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with The Economy and You and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. We livestream every Tuesday from noon to 12.30. You get a chance to hear what people are doing about sustainability in Hawaii and what the issues are impacting all of us in all the islands. Join us, please. Hello, this is Martin Desping. I want to get you excited about my new show which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, welcome back to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're here today talking with Robin Kanashiro, who is the vice president of the Bank of Hawaii and is involved in the professional services group of the bank, which is in the private banking area. And so there's some new products and services that he's been working on in higher levels of, I guess, customization for some of the customers that they have. So, Robin, can you share with us just a little bit of what are you doing over there? How is this all working? Absolutely. For the first segment, we started talking about how the bank is changing as a delivery model. And with the generational changes is that certain people are going to be interacting with the bank a little bit differently, where the millennial generation are used to dealing in one-on-one relation with our clients and really utilizing our branch system to do that. But the millennial generation may not ever necessarily have to walk into the branch and deal with somebody on a face-to-face basis. So as a result, the bank is really looking at how can we connect with our clients with this new generational changes. So what we're looking at is really looking at our client base first and building around it from a demographic basis, but also a profession basis. So that's unique. I mean, you're actually looking at the customer's needs. Absolutely. No, I'm ironic. And that's the way it should be. And I know the bank has never lost sight of that, but a lot of companies kind of have the attitude that they're going to go out and here's the product and if you want to use it, if you don't, that's okay, someone else will. But you're actually taking the approach of trying to define what those needs are first and then designing the products around it. Absolutely. And banking has gotten more commoditized in the last 25 years since you've been in the banking too, mainly because again, competition and technology. So that really to you, as any business, you need to evolve. And especially now with the technology, you need to evolve even quicker. So we decided to really, rather than just being a purely product-focused bank, because most banks in Hawaii do have all the services that anybody should need on the business side or the private banking side or private wealth side, but really how do you deliver those? And we decided to really focus on a certain industry and profession and build around it. So from a sense, from a healthcare perspective, my group, the professional services group, focuses on supporting healthcare professionals. And they need a lot of support. Absolutely. And I know that from personal experience. You know, for Hawaii, we're so much underserved in the market as far as healthcare professionals. I think there's new studies that Hawaii is about 500 doctors short. They are, yes. And as a result. I'm getting worse. Absolutely. You know, with the industry changing so rapidly, not a lot of financial resources, financial education for these doctors as well, cost of living in Hawaii. We decided to really focus on how can we deliver our services and be more accessible. And that's the key role of my group, is that have that industry experience, but also be more accessible and provide these resources that we have all this time. It's just a different delivery model. So most of myself, like you know, and my team came from the commercial side of the bank, where we had that industry knowledge, but now also bridging that gap to the personal side, the personal wealth. So actually we do both sides, rather than the siloed aspect. Well, and a lot of positions need both sides of that, you know, service level, you know, the business as well as the personal, because it is their own business. No, absolutely. And, you know, my group is called professional services because a lot of different industries that have that situation. CPAs, for example, is that their personal wealth and their family's well-being financially is definitely ingrained closely with their business and professional lives. So by having these two things and these two areas kind of merge and make it a little bit easier for the client to access some of these services, you know, we hopefully are doing what's right for the bank, but also for the community as well as that individual, of course. Well, and there's also, I think, a benefit to the employer that's bringing the positions in. Is it, you know, the employer wants those positions to stay. They want them to be comfortable, they want to get them integrated into the community as fast as possible. And I think having a collaboration between the bank and the employer to help welcome them here, assuming that they're coming from the mainland, and a lot of them do, into the community and helping them set up and get established. Absolutely. And, you know, for healthcare professionals, especially, you know, we have to hire a lot from the mainland, and hopefully some of them are returning home, coming back home for their family matters. That's ideal. Absolutely. But returning home is costly. The cost of living, as everybody knows, unfortunately, is a little bit higher than the mainland. But we have to provide those opportunities when they arise and, you know, hopefully engage them and help them adjust back to Hawaii or establish some routes. So definitely working with the employers, like, for example, there's three major healthcare providers as far as hospitals, you know, working with their recruiting directors, working with their executives to really build a partnership between the community, the healthcare community, as well as the financial community. That's a good bridge and a necessary one because that's, you know, there's a lot of people out there competing for those physicians all over the country. And there are cheaper places for them to move and they can maintain a higher standard of living in those places. And so the more attractive we can make it for the physicians to move to Hawaii, the better for everybody. Absolutely. You know, it's more of a community... Hawaii, as you know, growing up here, too, very much a community-minded approach. You know, we can move the needle. We can make change if everybody works together. And, you know, especially for a corporation like Bank of Hawaii, some of the larger healthcare providers, you know, we can make change if we work together as a partnership. Exactly. Now, as you get into the customization and design of these products, can you just spend a couple minutes and give us some examples of what you're talking about? Well, it's actually multifaceted. It's not necessarily product-focused, but a lot of it is first and foremost accessibility. You know, for healthcare professionals, especially any kind of professionals, actually, they don't really interact with the bank how normal people would anyway. You know, they're in clinic. They're doing procedures at the hospital. Again, they're like the millennials. They'll never probably interact with the bank in a teller. So what we wanted to do is provide that simplicity and convenience to have that warm connection with the bank. At least if they need assistance, they know who to call. At least we have some awareness of what their situation is being a healthcare professional. Secondly, it is that access to other bank resources, mainly the financial resources like you're familiar with, your banking career, many people just view a bank, especially in Hawaii, as a place to put my deposits maybe a place to get a mortgage or a home equity line. But really, a lot of the banks in the Bank of Hawaii, of course, has other resources. It has estate planning. It has investment planning. It has insurance. It has all these resources. And it was difficult at first to really connect with our clients and making sure that they have access. So, whereas my group is called Professional Services Group, we don't want to be exclusive. We want to be more inclusive and utilize these resources, especially for healthcare professionals who do not have that financial acumen or financial background. And, you know, from my experience, the private banking group, and I don't know how it is today, but we used to promote it as a one-stop shop for all your banking needs. So these private bankers are kind of like bankers on steroids. I mean, they know all the different services in the products and all the different ways that they can help the customer. And so the customer only has to go to this one place to get all their needs taken care of. Absolutely. And that's exactly what our model is. If it's an independent practitioner, a business owner, we can assist them on the commercial side or the business side if it's loans or deposits or any of the financial services. And also because of the integration of their personal and professional lives, we also help them obviously on the personal side as well. It is that one-stop convenient shop. Right. And does this extend also to the family members and maybe even the children to some degree? Absolutely. And where the biggest, I think, benefit is for our clients, it's not necessarily about their profession at the end of the day. It's a means to an end. It's definitely generating personal wealth and personal safety and wellness for their family. And that's our biggest concern is that provide the financial resources, financial education in certain cases, especially for the young professionals that did not grow up in the banking environment or the finance degree or accounting degree for a matter. It is providing that resource and availability. Right. And what's nice about this concept is that it's scalable in the sense that you can work with individuals that are brand new to the profession and just getting started. But you also can scale up and offer a whole variety of different services to professionals who've been doing it for 20, 25 years and need a whole lot more help and maybe even getting ready to transition into a retirement. Absolutely. And like anybody else, any other profession or any other career, you'd go through life cycles. Now, a young professional in health care has a different life cycle. They're finishing their college careers and their educational careers. Even late 20s, early 30s, when for us, we have already started our careers. Life changes and then you start having kids at 30s, but that's when they're starting to ramp up their own careers in health care. So really, it's accelerated when it comes down to their personal finance and being more accessible there and providing their resources is going to be very different than a retiring professional. And their needs are going to be very different as well. Providing those, the retirement planning, the financial planning as they get older in their careers and hopefully making that connection between the established professional and young professional and maybe having them connect with each other to make sure that there's perpetuity with that practice. And that's a big potential exit strategy type of process that they can go through. But even after that's done and you've got somebody who has transitioned into retirement, they're going to live another 20 years. So you want to maintain that relationship with them during that entire process. And at some point, there's going to be the need for an estate settlement activity of some sort to help transition whatever assets they might have to the next generation. And you provide that as well, right? Absolutely. And thank you for the plug for begging it as well. But we are the largest trust company in Hawaii, I believe. And that's where those resources come into effect, where we can help them throughout their entire life cycle. When somebody retires, that's definitely not the end of their financial life where they are going to have an estate built up to pass on to the next generation for their own families. And having that estate and trust settlement department definitely helps us. Now, if there was somebody out there that wanted to be able to reach out to a private banker or maybe even to yourself to get more information or to maybe schedule an appointment, what would that process be? Can they go to a website or something or what do you suggest? Absolutely. So we have, our group is called the Professional Services Group. It's actually on the Bank of Hawaii website and their private wealth. However, you can reach out to any one of our bank employees and some of my peers and just say, you know, I'm a professional and I was interested in just connecting with somebody at the bank and they'll actually connect. What they need to do is go into the bank and ask to talk to Robin. That's exactly right. So all that business will come your way. All right, very good. Well, you know, believe it or not, our time is up. We need to, you know, kind of wrap things up in 20 seconds or less. Any final words, anything you want to share with the audience today? Well, I appreciate the time, Reggie. It's an opportunity to really share how bank voice is changing and evolving. It's also looking for the 21st century, you know, making sure that the bank is more accessible but also cater to our client's needs in a number of different ways. If it's your millennial, if you're a baby boomer, really to be part of the community and be more accessible. Well said. And this is Reg Baker, business in Hawaii. We've had Robin Shiro here today talking about the Bank of Hawaii and their professional services group and how the bank has changed over the last 20, 25 years to get more sophisticated and focused on servicing the customer's needs and defining what they are. We broadcast live every Thursday at 2 o'clock from 2 to 2.30. And we always highlight successful stories about businesses and individuals in Hawaii. I hope to see you next week. Until then, Allah.