Capital Analytics Associates Interview with Phil Bravo
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Capital Analytics Associates interview with Phil Bravo

Capital Analytics Associates, March 4, 2025

Philip Bravo, senior vice president and market president of Cogent Bank, spoke with Invest: about the changes in client expectations over time and how Cogent approaches those changes. He also discussed the bank’s growth strategy. “It is about identifying teams, making sure you have the right people in place, people who are excited about what we’re doing and want to be a part of something.”

What separates Cogent Bank from other players in the region? 

We’ve been here since 2018. We entered the market by opening up an office here in Jacksonville. We’re in the JTB area, which is a central part of Jacksonville, just south of downtown, but central to the beaches and central to the counties south, north and east of us. We’ve had a phenomenal growth in North Florida. We started with zero and have grown to almost $200 million in assets.  We are a business-focused bank. We like to bank small to medium-sized businesses, and as you can imagine, there are many more small to medium-sized businesses than there are larger ones. We touch a lot more people in that sense, the business owners and their employees. A fair amount of what you see in North Florida is built by small businesses. You might hear about the larger ones, but it’s the smaller ones that we feel are overlooked sometimes.

How do you think client expectations have changed over time?

As banks have grown, they’re not able to solve everything at the brick-and-mortar branch or by picking up the phone. As a result, call centers have become the first point of contact for customers at many banks. There are also thresholds inside of bank branches throughout the city where they will only provide service if you keep a certain amount of money with them, among other things. People have gone from being able to be serviced in person or by the phone to now waiting and waiting for a response.  

If you come and bank with Cogent, you’re going to have a banker assigned to you, a team assigned to you. We are responsive and follow the sundown rule. We may not solve your problem that day, but you are going to hear from us. Our model is a high-touch delivery and has been enthusiastically supported and welcomed by our clients.  

Given advances in technology, AI, and innovation, what will be the impact on the human workforce in the banking industry?

I believe that banking is personal, regardless of whether you’re a big business or a small business. It is personal. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that everybody is a little bit different with their approach to money and how they want to manage it. While technology plays an important role, I believe that you can’t substitute every aspect of banking with technology. There still should be a personal aspect to banking. Clients want to know that their money is safe, available, and they need to have trust in the institution you’re doing business with. Clients want to be able to talk to somebody.

I think you can still have high technology without completely replacing all the human capital. At Cogent, we don’t have a form of AI in our client service. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to or can’t find areas to incorporate AI in other aspects of the bank.  We plan to continue with our personal approach to banking rather than adopting an AI approach.

What is the bank’s role in supporting small-business owners and their new ventures?

We work with small-business resource networks throughout our state footprint. In every one of our metro offices, there is a small-business resource network available to them. There is also the local chamber network that supports small businesses. In addition, we’re an active Small Business Administration (SBA) lender. We are a preferred lender, and we have been now for several years. We can lend anywhere in the United States when it comes to the SBA, but the majority of our loans are in the Southeast where we have strong market knowledge.

What is next for Cogent Bank? 

What’s next for Cogent Bank is identifying new teams. What I mean by that is a team of bankers in select cities. We would like to open an office in Tallahassee or further down the panhandle. We would even consider an office in Georgia, maybe near or in Atlanta. 

The biggest issue with expansion is making sure you have the right people in place, people who are excited about what we’re doing and want to be a part of something. Going into a city and opening up a branch and then hiring people is not our model. Our model is to identify teams, to work with them, get them excited about what we’re doing, and to make sure they understand that they can come here and be successful because if you’re not successful here, we’re not successful. One of our five pillars is 100% retention of talent. To expand, you need to make sure you have a team’s commitment because it is a long process.