Monterey Financial Hires New CEO

OCEANSIDE – One of Kevin Weiss’ most formative business experiences was the car washing business he started as a teenager.

“It never ceases to amaze me how much the lessons that I learned in that business are still applicable, especially walking into a situation like this, because in that role I was managing people much older than me, I didn’t have a car, couldn’t drive and so I need to hire people who could drive,” he said.

“This situation is a little different, but I’m walking into a company where people have been here for 30 years, and I have been around a little more than 30 years, but not much,” he added with a chuckle.

Weiss was named the new CEO last month of Monterey Financial Services LLC, a specialty financing and loan servicing firm that aims to help primarily small businesses grow their revenue through alternative financing options like loan servicing and recovery and receivables purchasing.

Weiss came to Monterey from Reforge, an online skills training and software company within which he led the B2B business division and served as chief of staff to the company’s CEO, Brian Balfour.

Under Weiss’ watch, Reforge B2B grew its revenue from less than $1 million to more than $10 million in three years.

Weiss said he learned by watching Balfour that successful chief executives should be hypervigilant about how both employees and customers feel and maintain their authenticity whenever possible.

“People are going to find out anyway, so what I took away from him is just own it and face reality and tell people the truth,” he said. “People don’t always like to hear it, because it doesn’t always feel good, but they’re going to find out anyway and they appreciate hearing it.”

Weiss was also a founding member of M13, a Santa Monica-based venture capital firm that currently manages more than $1.3 billion in assets.

“They were in search for a CEO and initially it sounded very different than what I was looking for, but the more that I learned and the more that I dug into the company, the more I felt like there’s a great foundation at this company and also a ton of opportunity,” he said of joining Monterey.

Opportunity to Modernize, Grow Client Base

Bob and Kathi Steinke founded Monterey in 1990 and led the company for more than two decades before Bob stepped down as CEO in 2013. Even after Bob Steinke’s death in 2019, Kathi remains the company’s chair.

Weiss is also the first new CEO for Monterey in six years, succeeding Shaun Lucas, who had been with the company since 1999.

“We’re excited to have Kevin lead Monterey as our new CEO during such a pivotal time,” stated Kathi Steinke. “Kevin’s energy, focus on customer centricity, and fresh perspective are exactly what we need as we enter this next phase.”

Weiss said the potential to help modernize Monterey’s technological foundation and make the business more efficient were major factors that drew him to accept the role.

Monterey’s website, for example, was utilitarian but lacked some of the responsiveness of modern tech platforms that consumers have grown to expect as a baseline.

“All of our expectations have risen as consumers because of things like Amazon, things like Uber, the technology that we interact with every day,” Weiss said. “It’s hard to just shut off that part of your brain when you go to work and say, ‘we’re going to lower our expectation for borrowing money or interacting with a business tool that we use.’ The bar has gone up across the board.”

Monterey has also built a reputation for operating conservatively, Weiss argued. Although the company excels at due diligence, some opportunities to work with certain clients may not be available unless Monterey becomes a bit bolder.

“Everyone expects things to go faster … Our customers are small businesses for the most part, and if they need to take six months with us to get more cash for their business or increase their sales, then we’re not doing a good enough job,” he said.

Long History of Profitability, Resiliency

Weiss joins Monterey following the company’s 35th consecutive year of profitability and as the company’s only debt is in the form of a line of credit with California Bank & Trust and also Monterey Receivables Funding, which the company uses to buy receivables.

In addition to the credit line, Monterey’s leadership has largely reinvested equity in the company for years, including into its three-decade-old pension plan for employees. The company also receives investments via convertible loans from high net-worth clients.

“There are a lot of companies that have a single source of capital, whether that’s venture capital financing or whether that’s bank financing or something else, and if something goes wrong in that relationship or that market, that’s how a lot of companies get into trouble,” Weiss said. “We have built ourselves into a more resilient organization because we’re diversified in how we’re capitalized.”

Weiss said Monterey’s values of local reinvestment and maintaining employee well-being were obvious once he looked further into the company and helped him ultimately make his decision.

“There’s a strong legacy here to step into of taking care of people first and then building a great business at the same time,” he said. “So I think that’s an exciting and big challenge, big shoes to step into but in a positive way.”

Monterey Financial Services LLC
FOUNDED: 1989
CEO: Kevin Weiss
HEADQUARTERS: Oceanside
BUSINESS: Specialty financing and loan servicing
EMPLOYEES: About 130
WEBSITE: montereyfinancial.com
CONTACT: (800) 456-2225
NOTABLE: Monterey has been profitable for each of the last 36 years