Doctor banks on success with colleagues

A family physician in California helps found a community bank catering to small businesses, including physician offices, finding success along the way.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Oct. 4, 2004.

Whenever Walter F. Combs, MD, a family physician, in Temecula, Calif., needs a loan, he won't go to any other bank but Mission Oaks National Bank.

After all, why would he? He not only fits the profile of the small- to medium-sized business owner to whom the bank caters but also is one of its three co-founders.

As a frenzied wave of consolidation swept the banking industry in the late 1990s, Gary W. Votapka, Mission Oaks' president and CEO, was working at a bank that had grown from a community bank into one of the state's largest banks.

Seeking a return to community banking, he approached a co-worker, Keith Johnson, about starting a community bank in California.

Johnson said he initially did not let on that he and Dr. Combs also were discussing starting their own bank in Temecula -- halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. Eventually, he told Votapka, and a meeting was set up.

"Keith, Walt and I got together, met a couple times and decided, 'Yes, the chemistry was right,' " Votapka said.

So the three joined forces in 1999 and recruited about a dozen people, including themselves, to start the bank. Eighteen months later, the dozen organizers received regulatory approval and raised $7.6 million from 325 shareholders, of which up to 35% came from the banks' organizers, Votapka said.

The three co-founders then immediately transferred all their professional -- and personal -- loans and banking activities to Mission Oaks "not only for obviously wanting to support the bank but also the convenience of having everything right here," Votapka said. "It's the only way to do it."