The Southwest Ledger

Texas Bank and Trust, the Longview-based bank that has operated in East and North Texas since 1958, promoted Jeremiah Hansen to Dallas–Fort Worth regional president. Hansen had been the bank's Flower Mound market president and joined in 2020 after sixteen years at Wells Fargo, where he led business and commercial banking teams. The bank, which runs 19 full-service banking centers, also added Roberto Monsivais, a mortgage lending officer who came to TBT Mortgage from Cadence Bank after more than twenty years in the business, and Bailey Skinner, an assistant vice president in corporate accounting.

Dallas–Fort Worth is the deepest and most contested commercial banking talent market in Texas, where community banks recruit against super-regionals and money-center lenders for the same relationship managers and credit officers. A metro regional-president role sits above the individual branch markets and is the level at which commercial-banking coverage across the Metroplex is organized.

For the relationship managers and credit staff those relationships run through, the change is a new senior name over Dallas–Fort Worth commercial banking at a bank that has been in the region for decades. Who reports to whom is the part of a move like this that the market tracks.

Susser Bank, the Dallas-based commercial bank, named Ryan Branigan a senior vice president and relationship manager on its Central Texas commercial banking team, based in Austin. Branigan brings more than twenty years in commercial banking, credit, and treasury management, focused on privately held businesses, and joins a group run by Central Texas president Mark Metcalfe.

A senior relationship manager is the seat closest to a commercial bank's operating-company lending and deposit relationships — the accounts that anchor a balance sheet in a given market. Austin's commercial banking bench runs thinner than Houston's or Dallas's, and the pool of bankers who already carry local commercial books there is small.

A senior relationship-manager seat filled in Austin is one fewer available to the banks recruiting for the same profile in a market where that profile is scarce.

Vantage Bank, the San Antonio–based bank founded in 1923, named Arlene Carroll executive vice president and El Paso market president. Carroll spent more than fifteen years as a senior vice president and commercial banking manager at WestStar Bank in El Paso and has forty years in the market overall, having started as a part-time teller while a student at the University of Texas at El Paso.

El Paso is a self-contained commercial banking market where relationships are personal and local knowledge is the moat — a city that lenders based in other Texas metros have long found hard to serve from a distance. Its senior commercial bankers are a small, known group.

A banker with four decades in El Paso moving to run another bank's market there is a visible event among that group, and it changes who competes at the top of the city's commercial market.

MidFirst Bank, the Oklahoma City–based bank with more than $42 billion in assets, agreed to acquire Dallas Capital Bank, a $1.2 billion Dallas bank that serves entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals. Terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026.

The purchase follows several years of MidFirst activity in Texas: it acquired Houston banking locations from Amerant Bank in 2024, opened a River Oaks center in 2025, and already operates in Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston. An acquisition of an established bank comes with a book of business and a local team already in place.

For Dallas commercial bankers, an acquisition changes who signs the paychecks and, often, how much room a lender has above him. Integrations are when reporting lines get redrawn, and they are when the bankers who anchor an acquired book weigh whether the new structure still fits. An out-of-state buyer with $42 billion behind it acquiring a $1.2 billion Dallas lender is the kind of transaction that puts experienced local bankers in play, whether or not they planned to move.

Texas Gulf Bank, a Houston-based bank founded in 1913 with nine offices across greater Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast, promoted Jessica Cash to chief credit officer. Cash joined in 2022 from Allegiance Bank and has overseen the bank's credit operations, implemented its loan origination system, and built its credit-analyst training program.

The chief credit officer is one of the few seats that shapes what a bank's whole loan book is allowed to look like. Senior credit talent is scarce and slow to develop — the multi-year path from running credit operations to leading the function, the one Cash followed, is why these roles are hard to fill from outside.

In a Houston market where experienced credit officers are thin, a credit chair filled is a seat that will not be on the market.

Peoples Bank, the Lubbock-based bank founded in 1968, added Will Adams as vice president and commercial lender at its 82nd Street location in Lubbock. Adams has eighteen years in banking, with prior stints in the Fort Worth area and in Lubbock. He joins a bank that recently combined with Houston-based Cornerstone Capital Bancorp, a merger that created a company with more than $3.4 billion in assets.

For a market the size of Lubbock, a senior commercial lender changing banks is a visible event. The pool of bankers carrying local commercial books is small, and each move is felt by the banks recruiting from it.

Trinity Bank, a Fort Worth community bank, named Mindy Hegi chief financial officer. Hegi has more than twenty years in community-bank finance, including a stretch as CFO of Carlile Bancshares, a $2.2 billion community bank holding company, and she joined Trinity's board in 2024 before taking the executive role.

At a small bank, the finance chair sets how much capital the lenders have to work with and how fast the balance sheet can grow. The market for community-bank CFOs in North Texas is a small one, and Hegi's move fills one of its senior chairs.

Security State Bank & Trust, based in Fredericksburg, named Tish Perez president and a member of its board — the first woman to hold either position at the bank. Perez has twenty-seven years at Security State and has served as chief lending officer, regional president, branch president, and senior vice president. Dan Kemp continues as chairman and chief executive.

Leadership successions at closely held community banks rarely move bankers into the market, but they do reset who the decision-maker is for a region's commercial borrowers. In the Fredericksburg market, the person who now runs the bank is one who came up through its lending side.

Future Financial Bankshares, a holding company formed specifically to acquire a bank, agreed to buy Palmer Bancshares, the parent of Commercial State Bank in Palmer, Texas — an institution with about $120 million in assets. The deal value was not disclosed. Palmer sits just south of the Dallas metro.

An investor group forming a holding company to buy a small existing charter is a recurring feature of the Texas community-bank market. Who will run Commercial State Bank, and what changes for its staff, is not yet public.

Third Coast Bancshares, the Houston-based bank holding company, reported $6.74 billion in total assets at the end of the second quarter, up from $4.94 billion a year earlier. Gross loans reached $5.44 billion, a 33 percent increase from the same quarter of 2025, with commercial and industrial lending driving most of the growth. Deposits were $5.86 billion.

Crossing $6 billion is a threshold that raises the regulatory, risk, and reporting expectations a bank carries behind its balance sheet. Third Coast's headcount was 504 at quarter-end, down from 514 three months earlier. The company operates through 21 branches across Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.

In the Texas commercial banking talent market, a bank that has grown its C&I book by a third in a year is the profile whose credit, risk, and portfolio needs tend to intensify as it scales. Third Coast has not detailed hiring plans.

Kenneth Kuntschik, regional director of the Texas Department of Banking's San Antonio office, is retiring effective August 31 after more than twenty-two years with the agency and almost thirty-seven years as a banking regulator, including service as a commissioned examiner at the FDIC. He was promoted to regional director in 2005. No successor was named in the announcement.

The regional director of a state banking department is the examiner-in-chief for a large share of the state's community banks — the office that decides how supervision lands on the banks it examines. A change in that seat matters to every state-chartered bank in the region, because the working relationship with the regulator resets around whoever fills it.

For the banks that office supervises, and the bankers inside them, the practical question is who the department names next. That is not yet known.