Washington (By Tim Mazzucca, Business Journal) June 13, 2004 -- D.C. may be getting a new bank that differs from the region's other startup banks in two respects.

First, it would target the Hispanic community.

Second, it plans to go to public equities markets for its initial capital.

Julio Lopez-Brito, who has been a part of three technology-related startups, has been organizing the group that hopes to open a bank focused on serving the area's Hispanic community.

When the bank has everything in place, he hopes to open two locations: one in D.C. and the second in either Arlington or Silver Spring. He says the bank may not have everything ready for another year.

New to the banking industry, Lopez-Brito hired NuBank (www.nubank.com), a San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based company that has advised 125 startup banks in their formation and is working with five startup Hispanic banks in the nation right now.

"This is the most comfortable I've felt" starting a business, Lopez-Brito says. "It's a highly regulated business industry, and I have ready capital -- it's a totally different composition than a tech startup."

Lopez-Brito says he's taking the rare course of starting as a publicly owned institution, rather than going after private investors, to get more people involved in the bank's future from the beginning.

"When you say 'bank,' people's ears perk up," Lopez-Brito says. "A bank that is a public company from Day One typically has 800 to 1,000 shareholders when it's launched, so it's inclusive."

Lopez-Brito, a native of Venezuela who now lives in Potomac, has attracted five organizers to the bank and plans to attract 15 more.

From start to finish, Lopez-Brito expects the process to take a year and a half to open a bank. Banks that have opened through the private-funding route have pulled things together within four months.

"It takes much longer," says Lew Sosnowik, vice president of bank securities at Koonce Securities (www.koonce.net). "I don't think they'll have trouble finding an underwriter, but it'll take a while to get everything ready."

No matter how long Lopez-Brito takes to open his as-yet-unnamed bank, he plans to fill an undeniably underserved niche in the Hispanic market. Two institutions in the region expressly serve the African-American community, one serves the Indian-American community and another caters to females, according to data by the Federal Reserve Bank. The region did have a Hispanic institution founded in the 1970s named Hemisphere National Bank, but after a series of acquisitions over the years, it has been rolled into Baltimore-based Mercantile.

While there aren't any institutions with the mission of serving Hispanic communities, many banks do it without the explicit dedication by opening branches in those communities and hiring residents.

"It's been the motivation for the bank and the main driver of the bank," Lopez-Brito says. "We would also target individuals looking for high-touch, low-tech relationships with their bank."

The bank will seek a charter through the national bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.