After taking the CEO post at Amerant Bancorp in November 2025, Carlos Iafigliola embarked on a credit turnaround at the bank. 

Iafigliola was named CEO and president of the Coral Gables, Florida-based company in May, after serving as interim CEO following the November departure of former chief executive Jerry Plush.

Plush stepped down about a week after the $10.3 billion-asset bank reported third-quarter 2025 earnings, in which nonperforming assets had jumped to $140 million, from $98 million in the previous quarter. The bank logged $3.8 million in separation costs tied to Plush’s departure.

An increase in problem commercial real estate and commercial loans had “put pressure on management credibility,” Piper Sandler analyst Stephen Scouten wrote in a note to investors at the time. 

Since then, Iafigliola has pursued an overhaul, and the bank is better, from a credit perspective, than it was one year ago, he said.

Amerant made it “very explicit” that it conducted a third-party review of its loan portfolio in last year’s fourth quarter, analyzing “every single loan,” Iafigliola said in a recent interview.  

“We were able to retool the credit team to perform multiple types of analysis to validate the portfolio, and to try to create improvements on the asset quality of the bank, which we have been progressively accomplishing,” he said.

Nonperforming assets jumped further in Q4, to about $187 million, as a result. Amerant also exited riskier loan exposures and appointed a new chief credit officer, Lee Ann Cragg, in the fourth quarter, Iafigliola said. 

This year, Amerant revamped credit practices, including policies, procedures and internal systems, he said. 

“We are progressively changing the internal culture around how we embrace credit risk within our lending portfolio,” Iafigliola said. “That is paying off.”

In Q2, nonperforming assets dipped $5 million from the prior quarter, to $186.6 million. Those represent 1.81% of total assets, down from 1.93% in the first quarter. The bank’s gross loans increased by about $112 million quarter over quarter, to $6.9 billion in Q2, although that was partially offset by strategic loan sales and exits. The bank reports third-quarter earnings Oct. 23.

“There's still more work to do,” he said, but “the foundation of all these changes has already been established.”

Iafigliola said all of the bank’s non-performing loans “have specific action plans, and we continue to work diligently to reduce them.”

Additionally, Amerant simplified its structure, ending up with just two business lines: international and domestic, he said. The bank has also sought to trim expenses and focus on the areas it can add value for customers, he said.

Now, growing the bank’s commercial segment is a particular area of focus. Second-quarter loan growth was largely driven by commercial and industrial loan production and residential mortgages, the bank said.

“When you're going through a process of performing risk recalibration within your loan portfolio, you need to start adding items that are suitable for your new credit culture, and I believe that's where we need most of the work going forward, growing our commercial side,” Iafigliola said.

Serving companies in logistics, education and professional services in the bank’s south Florida and Tampa markets are some of the most ripe opportunities, he said, because firms in those segments are typically generating $50 million or less in annual revenue.

“That’s a sweet spot for a bank our size, where you can effectively manage the commercial and the ownership relationship on a centralized level,” Iafigliola said. 

Of course, there’s no shortage of banks vying for greater share in the south Florida market. Amerant has 2.36% of the deposit market share in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties, and 0.37% in Tampa and its county, Hillsborough, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data from June. 

Some big banks fail to provide “the household approach,” Iafigliola said, referring to customer experience synergies created when a bank understands the entirety of the relationship.  

“When you think about a business owner and their company, we are kind of a one-stop solution for them,” he said. At larger lenders, challenges result when customers’ wealth management needs “get completely separated from your commercial needs, and then you’re starting to deal with groups that are not completely coordinated,” Iafigliola said.

Amerant is also chasing growth in Venezuela, where it serves commercial and individual customers, particularly in private banking. In the second quarter, Venezuelan deposits increased almost $500 million from the first quarter, to $2.5 billion, and those are “operating deposits tied to essential industries,” Iafigliola said during the bank’s Q2 earnings call.

Comparatively, the bank’s domestic deposits dropped about 2% from the first to second quarters, to $5.13 billion, which was due to “the exit of a high-cost large fund provider,” Amerant CFO Sharymar Calderon Yepez said during the earnings call.