​Sitting at the helm of the $34 billion Banc of California, Jared Wolff is too busy to think about legacy.

In seven years as the Brentwood-based regional bank’s chair, president and chief executive, Wolff, 57, has seen it all. He guided the bank – which provides banking and treasury management services to small, middle-market and venture-backed businesses – through the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2023 banking crisis and a merger with PacWest Bancorp the same year.

Today, regional economic pressures, a high-interest rate environment and steep competition for deposits throw curveballs at regional lenders’ growth strategies and profitability. But years of experience leading L.A.’s top banks prepared Wolff for these headwinds, he said.

“I’m able to operate with a lot more confidence, because each day, things arise and
I can say, ‘Well, I’ve seen that before,’” Wolff said.

Balancing that kind of conviction and clarity, which Wolff said can be “magnetic” in business, with open-mindedness and delegation is key to his management style.

“Wins are always team wins when you have the right people and the right culture, and you stress communication, and then you let folks do their jobs,” he said. “I really don’t believe in decisions by consensus.”

An attorney by training, Wolff stepped into his current leadership role at Banc of California in 2019 after a two-year stint at City National Bank. Until 2014, he served as president of PacWest Bank, a position he rose to from the general counsel role he was hired for in 2002.

Chasing opportunities

From a young age, Wolff has chased opportunity. His interest in business started early, he said, and he began working odd gigs as a kid. In his first job, he went door-to-door selling greeting cards.

“I always had the desire to get out and work, whether it was knocking on doors to wash cars in my neighborhood or applying for a job somewhere,” Wolff said. “I was never really afraid to put myself out there.”

The Hancock Park native left the Golden State to attend Duke University before going on to study French and literature at Middlebury College. He lived in Paris for a few years, helping build out cable systems at Time Warner Inc., while mulling over whether to attend business or law school.

Inspiration from an international business lawyer Wolff knew in France led him into the legal field and the law program at the University of Michigan. Out of school, he landed a New York City-based role at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

But between the time he spent traveling and working, Wolff wasn’t putting down roots in New York.

“I was learning a ton, but I felt like everybody I knew, I had met on a deal, and I was not really building any sort of community,” he said.

When a new job in investment banking offered to take him back to his hometown, Wolff agreed. Ultimately, that move – and the deep network Wolff tapped into when he returned to L.A. – set the stage for his banking career’s ascent.

“It opened my eyes to a much broader set of opportunities and got me back engaged with the city and figuring out ways that I could build a life here,” said Wolff, who met his wife, Courtney, shortly after moving back in the late 1990s.

L.A. growth path

Wolff has always seen a path to growth in L.A., a vision he extends to his role steering Banc of California’s future.

The collapse of several regional banks amid a major deposit run and subsequent consolidation created a window for large banks and resilient alternatives to step in and earn wallet share.

Amid the rubble, Banc of California scooped up the crumbling PacWest in November 2023. The bank spent the following year repositioning its balance and returned to “business as usual” in 2025, sailing to growth in its earnings, loans, deposits and tangible book value per share.

Last year, “we intended to demonstrate the power and the purpose and the mission of our company and the promise of what this merger could create,” Wolff said.

Another focus for the year was supporting businesses affected by the wildfires,
the banker said. Banc of California gave $1 million to dozens of small businesses in Altadena and Pacific Palisades through a partnership with Steadfast LA and contributed funds to the L.A. Chamber of Commerce’s disaster relief fund.

“I feel a real commitment to give back to the city and certainly to invest in its future,” Wolff said. “The potential has never been greater.”