When Deon Pitsor first brought his family to Greater Des Moines in 2006, a friend of a friend dropped the name of a prominent businessman he should contact. Pitsor, an Iowa native who had been out of the state for more than 20 years, was a little dubious. “Why would he answer a phone call from some knucklehead who just landed in town.” A short time later, Meredith Corp. President and CEO Steve Lacy and his wife, Cathy, flagged down the Pitsors at a social event to make introductions. “I’ll admit that I was blown away by it. I’ll bet if you went to St. Louis, you wouldn’t have the same experience,” he said. The story illustrates everything that is good about the area for Pitsor, who has been Iowa market president for Bank of America Corp. since 2012. He is a former market president for the former Liberty Bank. 

What is Bank of America’s market?
We have what I describe as 10 locations. In Des Moines we have five consumer branches and one consumer branch in Mason City; one Merrill Lynch (Wealth Management) office in Des Moines, one each in Cedar Rapids and Davenport. The (downtown Des Moines) office is the commercial bank. And I kind of describe it this way: rather than just looking at the number of consumer branches, we are looking more and more at being an integrated operation, not just that the bank is one company and Merrill Lynch is one company. 

What is your role?
I kind of have one job but two roles. I am a commercial banker and I handle a portfolio of commercial businesses, companies between $5 million and $50 million in revenues. Along with that, I’m the state president, so in both of those roles, I go to our branches and meet with customers and employees and go to the Merrill Lynch offices and meet with their customers, and work to familiarize my business customers with all of the operations. 

Bank of America has come under a lot of scrutiny in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Do you find that you have a marketing or public relations problem?
I came here with Bank of America in 2006 until 2008, and when I left the company then, my role was limited. I went to Liberty Bank (in West Des Moines) and was the market president, so during the worst part of the financial crisis, I wasn’t with Bank of America. I came back for the commercial market president role in 2012, but the worst part of the financial crisis was over. The company has worked very hard on its reputation. I would say the company suffered not only financial losses in buying Countrywide (Financial Corp.); it also greatly damaged the brand. We have done a lot of work around that, and our national office has statistics from monitoring social media about how our reputation is doing. To me, it has been greatly improved.

Are there any business sectors you stay away from?
We do very little in investment real estate. … We’ve seen the greatest volatility there … which is what we saw in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 when vacancy rates were going up and values were going down. Otherwise, we’ll look at most every entity.

Where does Bank of America rank as a mortgage lender?
We do probably less than half the mortgage lending of what Wells Fargo (& Co.) does as a top-of-the-house volume. I find it interesting that if you look at Wells, Bank of America and JPMorgan (Chase & Co.), our top- line revenue is very close, around $22 billion, but where we draw that from differs significantly.

What is your top-of-the-line business? 
We divide up consumer and small business, then the corporate and big business side, and then institutions, which is more of the investment banking kind of thing. 

You have worked for two banks that took it on the chin as the result of the financial crisis – Bank of America and the former Liberty Bank. Have those experiences given you a unique perspective?
I’ve left Bank of America twice. I went to First National Bank of Kansas – now First National Bank of Omaha – to launch a commercial banking department. Then after three years, I went back to Bank of America in home building. They had an entire business line where all of our customers were residential home builders. From 2003 to 2006 was the absolute boom time. I had the perspective when I came back that I think I am better employee for having had that experience outside of Bank of America. I learned a lot, I worked with some really good people at Liberty, and I learned a lot about being a manager. The bank just wasn’t diverse enough outside of real estate, and it hit the worst real estate recession in 100 years.

You’re in a position to have a unique view on the health of the economy. How healthy is it?
The economy in Iowa and Des Moines will continue to be stable and continue to grow. Even though commodity prices are down, farmers in general have had such strong years that their balance sheets are in good shape. We have seen a good revival of manufacturing. If you ask manufacturers, their struggle is finding qualified workers. … Looking at the Des Moines economy and the building that is going on downtown, when we have out-of-town executives from Bank of America in town, if they haven’t been here before, they are always surprised by downtown Des Moines and how nice it is and how active it is.