Retirement appears in Bala Balkrishna’s career as a date, followed by another bank. He left Commercial Bank of California in December 2014. On February 1, 2018, Infinity Bank opened in Santa Ana. Between those two entries lies the appealing peculiarity of his working life: after spending decades learning how banks operate, he kept finding reasons to start one.
A new bank is an unusually elaborate way of keeping busy. There are investors to persuade, regulators to satisfy, people to recruit and customers to win. The name on the door is among the easier decisions. Balkrishna had already done the work once as CBC’s founding president and chief executive. His second venture brought him back to a familiar proposition: Southern California businesses could use a banker within reach.
His story has its large numbers, including two opening capital raises separated by fifteen years. But the more revealing thread is a small action that almost anyone can understand. Someone calls. Someone answers. Around that modest exchange, Balkrishna has made a very long career.
Before the corner office, a teller’s window
His banking career began at Bank of America in 1972, as a teller. Clerical jobs, middle management and lending assignments followed. His experience extended across consumer loans, real estate and commercial lending before taking him into regional leadership. From 1994 to 2001, he was First Bank’s executive vice president and Orange County regional manager in Newport Beach. He also earned an MBA at California State University, Fullerton.
The sequence matters. A teller encounters banking at the point where an institution’s procedures meet a customer’s patience. Lending adds a different question: what can this customer reasonably repay? Management brings responsibility for other people’s decisions. His route to the chief executive’s desk passed through those distinct kinds of work. The eventual founder had spent years inside the machinery he would later assemble.
There is something quietly unfashionable about that progression. It offers no sudden discovery, no miraculous afternoon when everything changed. It offers an accumulation of responsibilities. For a profession entrusted with other people’s money, an apprenticeship stretching across several kinds of banking has a certain charm. The details are less photogenic than a ribbon cutting, but considerably more useful once the scissors have been put away.
Thirty-six investors, one new bank
Commercial Bank of California opened in Costa Mesa in 2003 with $27.4 million from 36 original investors. Homebuilder William Lyon was among the business leaders behind it. For Balkrishna, the launch meant moving from managing a region of an existing institution to helping create an institution itself. A banker’s accumulated judgment was now being put to a different test.
Founding carries a practical distinction from inheriting an established operation. There is no long customer history to take for granted. Capital has to become a functioning bank, and a functioning bank has to become a place people choose. Having money available is a beginning. Finding sound uses for it is the occupation.
Balkrishna understood the tension. Speaking about the market for new banks in 2005, he acknowledged that putting a substantial opening capital base to work was difficult. The observation is more revealing than an uncomplicated celebration of fundraising. A large starting sum gives a bank room to lend and expand; it also gives management a demanding assignment. Money waiting for a purpose is an impatient guest.
He served as CBC’s president and CEO through 2013, became chairman in 2014 and retired that December. That first founding chapter therefore included years of running the business after its opening excitement had passed. In his career, the founding title came attached to the less ceremonial work of staying.
Opening capital raised, in nominal US dollars. These are bank fundraising totals, not personal wealth or bank valuations.
A retirement with an opening date
Infinity’s arrival gave that apparent ending a sequel. The bank completed a $33 million capital raise, exceeding the original $30 million target, and opened on February 1, 2018. B. Riley FBR acted as placement agent. The ambition had acquired the approvals and funding necessary to become an operating business.
At the launch, Balkrishna pointed to the acquisition of locally owned banks as an opening for a new community lender. The intended customers were businesses in Orange and Los Angeles counties. Geography was part of the proposition: organizers and managers with experience in the area would serve enterprises working in that same area.
Infinity was an unusual arrival. At its opening, it was described as only the ninth new US bank since 2008. That is the context in which to understand the decision to start again. A second bank launch was taking place in a period when the country was producing very few new banks at all.
The contrast between the name and the footprint is rather pleasant. Infinity suggests something without an edge. Its opening business plan had a very definite address in Santa Ana’s Hutton Centre and a regional customer base. A boundless name still needed a local reason to exist.
“Today is an important day for the small business community in Southern California.”
Bala Balkrishna, at Infinity Bank’s 2018 opening
The promise fits in a telephone call
In 2020, Balkrishna described Infinity’s service promise in language admirably free of technical decoration: “When you call, we answer. When you ask for help, we respond quickly and decisively.” It is a statement with an inconvenient advantage for the customer. Anyone can test it.
The words also help explain his public emphasis. A business owner approaching a lender has a specific matter to resolve. An accessible person who can explain a process or move a decision forward has practical value. For the banker, accessibility turns an attractive sentence into a recurring obligation. The telephone has no respect for a carefully polished mission statement.
The bank’s published philosophy pairs personal relationships with automated services. That combination is worth dwelling on. A customer may want the convenience of handling an ordinary transaction digitally and the reassurance of reaching a person when the question becomes complicated. A community bank’s personality has to survive both encounters.
In February 2022, Infinity’s fourth anniversary message invited customers to call its senior executives directly. The invitation put a concrete action alongside the promise of responsiveness. It gave the public a way to approach the people running the institution, rather than leaving customer service as an abstract virtue printed somewhere near the bottom of a brochure.
There is a team behind the first name
Victor Guerrero became Infinity’s president in June 2020 after serving as its founding chief operating officer and chief financial officer. Balkrishna’s remarks about the promotion emphasized Guerrero’s standing with customers and employees, and his attention to service. The qualities he chose to praise were consistent with the experience he wanted customers to have.
There is an interesting parallel between the two careers. Guerrero also started as a Bank of America teller, in 1988. Their starting dates were sixteen years apart, but the entry point was the same. Both reached executive responsibility after working through other areas of banking. It is a small connection with a useful perspective: the person setting service expectations has once occupied the position where customers first experience them.
The wider leadership group includes chief financial officer Allison Duncan, chief administrative officer Elaine Crouch and chief credit officer Patty Staples. The board includes business figures Cary Bren and Glenn Stearns. Those are professional connections within the institution, and they show how many kinds of experience sit around a founder’s central idea. Relationships may begin a conversation; finance, administration and credit make a bank capable of carrying it through.
The sequel has quarterly results
By 2025, Infinity Bancorp, the bank’s holding company, reported annual net income of $5.4 million, an increase of 38.4%. It paid dividends totaling $0.35 per share for the year. These are company results, belonging to the collective operation. They give the second founding chapter a measurable life beyond its opening announcement.
The more recent numbers resist a conveniently straight line. Deposits reached $343.3 million at March 31, 2026. In the first quarter, new loans and advances of $15.3 million were outweighed by $21.4 million in repayments. A bank can be making loans while its total loan balance falls. The flow of business is more complicated than a single upward arrow.
The following quarter moved differently. Loans reached $255.1 million at June 30, while deposits stood at $309.5 million. Second-quarter net income was $1.4 million. New loans and advances totaled $46.3 million, with $14.9 million in repayments. These changing balances are a reminder of what running the institution entails after the founding story has acquired its tidy dates.
Total loans at Infinity Bank. The daily work continues long after opening day.
Balkrishna remains listed as Infinity Bank’s chief executive. His professional geography is still Southern California, and the bank’s stated ambition remains rooted there. The teller’s window, regional office and two founding chapters belong to a working life spent returning to the same essential meeting: a customer with a need and a banker expected to respond.
Retirement gave the chronology a pause. Infinity gave it another opening date. The appeal of Balkrishna’s story rests in that return to work, with experience carried forward and the customer still at the other end of the line. A bank may require millions to open. Answering remains a remarkably economical place to begin.
Keep the conversation going
Career records, company updates and the bank’s public channels.