Ponce Financial Group, Inc., the holding company for Ponce Bank, announced today that the Boards of Directors of the Company and Ponce Bank appointed Mr. Sergio Vaccaro as Chief Financial Officer effective June 1, 2022. Mr. Vaccaro joins the Company and Ponce Bank from HSBC where he was the CFO of Private Bank Americas. Current CFO Frank Perez remains with the Bank as EVP and taking on the newly expanded role of Chief Investor Relations Officer. Mr. Vaccaro has 27 years of accounting experience including 15 years in senior roles at Citigroup, HSBC and Private Bank Americas where he spent 5 years as CFO after leading Financial Planning and Analysis. A native Spanish speaker, Mr. Vaccaro is thrilled to be part of a bank that celebrates and elevates so many members of the Latin and immigrant diaspora throughout the New York Area and beyond. “It is a real privilege to join Ponce Financial Group and Ponce Bank; I believe in their mission, and I look forward to contributing to their continued growth and success.” Perez adds, “I’m proud to be a part of an organization founded right here where I was born and raised, and which is so committed to growing opportunities for all within this community. My new role as CIRO provides an exciting platform to further this mission and ensure that our good work is recognized and rewarded by neighbors and shareholders alike.”
President and Chief Executive Officer’s Comments
Carlos P. Naudon, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and Ponce Bank, stated that, “We are grateful to Frank for his leadership in our mutual-to-stock conversion efforts; Frank grew up here and he knows our community, now that we are a fully-public minority depository institution (“MDI”) and a community development financial institution (“CDFI”), we need Frank’s fulltime effort dedicated to our becoming a preferred investment for similarly mission-driven investors. And it speaks well of our institution’s goals and mission that we are able to attract Sergio Vaccaro as our CFO, a person with invaluable experience and stature in the banking industry. We look forward to both helping us execute on our strategy to deploy our recently raised capital.”
Executive Chairman’s Comments
Steven A. Tsavaris, Executive Chairman, remarked that, “With the addition of Sergio Vaccaro as CFO, the transition of Frank Perez to CIRO and the recent addition of Luis Gonzalez as COO, we have assembled in short order an executive team that is highly experienced, shares our vision and can execute on our mission.”
About Ponce Financial Group, Inc.
Ponce Financial Group, Inc., as the successor by merger with PDL Community Bancorp, is the holding company for Ponce Bank. Ponce Bank is a Minority Depository Institution, a Community Development Financial Institution, and a certified Small Business Administration lender. The Bank’s business primarily consists of taking deposits from the general public and to a lesser extent alternative funding sources and investing those deposits, together with funds generated from operations and borrowings, in mortgage loans, consisting of 1-4 family residences (investor-owned and owner-occupied), multifamily residences, nonresidential properties and construction and land, and, to a lesser extent, in business and consumer loans. The Bank also invests in securities, which consist of U.S. Government and federal agency securities and securities issued by government-sponsored or government-owned enterprises, as well as, mortgage-backed securities, corporate bonds and obligations, and Federal Home Loan Bank stock.
