Hazem sits down with Integrity Bank CFO Betsy Reese to unpack what makes a bank financially strong and how small business owners can read the signals. Betsy shares her journey from first‑generation immigrant and deposit ops clerk to lender, CPA‑track accountant, and Rice MBA graduate leading the bank’s financial health and safety.

To learn more about Integrity Bank, go to itx.bank.

Subscribe to Banking on Integrity on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Key Takeaways

1. Betsy’s banking career began in high school in deposit operations, where she learned payments and reconciliations from the ground up.

2. Moving into lending pushed her from introvert to people‑focused banker, giving her a view of customers and credit.

3. Merger uncertainty led her to pursue an MBA at Rice while working and parenting full time.

4. She gained hard‑earned experience guiding a troubled bank back to “safe and sound” under regulatory scrutiny during COVID.

5. Betsy stresses that becoming a CFO requires understanding accounting, operations, lending, and regulation, not just classroom knowledge.

Timestamped Overview

02:00 Betsy shares her background as a first‑generation Chinese immigrant in Houston and her first job in deposit operations reconciling accounts and learning the payments system.

04:00 She describes leaving deposit ops for lending to avoid repetitive work, joining the chief lending officer’s team, and confronting her introversion as she started dealing with people.

06:00 Betsy talks about how lending work changed her personality, gave her customer exposure, and set the stage for later roles in accounting and finance.

08:00 She explains why bank mergers often eliminate roles like CFO, her dislike of uncertainty, and her long‑standing question about whether to sit for the CPA exam.

10:00 Betsy recounts choosing instead to pursue a full‑time MBA at Rice University while working full time and raising children, highlighting the support of her husband and classmates.

12:00 She describes navigating five different CEOs in one institution over five years, the bank’s COVID‑era troubles, and regulators pausing operations with a “speeding ticket.”

14:00 Betsy explains what “safe and sound” means in practice and how that experience taught her to run a bank more conservatively and with stronger discipline.

16:00 Hazem asks about the path to becoming a CFO, and Betsy walks through the need to understand accounting, operations, lending, and regulation before leading the bank’s finances.

18:00 She talks about measuring the bank’s health day to day—looking at capital, liquidity, asset quality, and profitability—and how those numbers fit together.

20:00 The conversation turns to how small and medium‑sized business owners can interpret basic bank performance indicators and why they should care about their bank’s strength.

22:00 Betsy reflects on Houston’s role in her career, the opportunities the city provided, and why she chose to stay in community banking rather than move to a Big Four track.

24:00 Hazem and Betsy discuss balancing growth with prudence, what “too much growth” can look like in banking, and how Integrity Bank aims to avoid those pitfalls.

26:00 She shares what a “good day” looks like for her as CFO and how she thinks about protecting both depositors and shareholders while supporting customers.

28:00 Hazem closes by tying Betsy’s story back to Integrity Bank’s mission and the importance of disciplined, relationship‑driven community banking.