Falcon Equipment Finance, a division of Falcon National Bank, saw its hard work pay off this year earning, for the first time, a spot on the Monitor 100 list. A recent rebrand and expanded product offering, coupled with a handful of executive hires, enabled the team to hit record breaking numbers and tremendous growth. Traditionally a small ticket lender, Falcon’s average ticket size doubled in the past two years.

“Employees and customers are the number one priority at Falcon. If we take care of our employees, they will take care of our customers,” Mikolich says. “If our customers are happy then we know we can deliver shareholder value.”

Development of the team has been a huge contributor to Falcon’s success and a critical component of its culture, which Mikolich places at the top of his priority list. The 30-person team added a few seasoned industry professionals and restructured to set themselves up for continued growth. Mikolich says his team now has the expertise and products to take on larger, more complex transactions.

The company went through a rebrand in late 2021. This generated interest from a wider audience as it brought expanded offerings to better service a small to middle ticket customer base. Recently, clients have been clamoring for Falcon’s expanded product offerings so much that equipment finance agreements and loan products now surpass leases as the company’s most popular products, Mikolich says.

Mikolich is keeping a beat on the challenges the evolving economic, political and regulatory changes have created. He says the overall condition of the economy along with some significant potential disrupters in technology are going to change society and staying nimble and proactive will be key. Staying quick to the draw for industry and market changes is a hallmark of smaller nationally chartered banks like Falcon. Falcon Fast is a term they have coined, which speaks to their ability to be nimble and quickly adjust where and when needed. This helped the team deliver solutions to their customers to reduce the impact of the supply chain issues that gripped the economy this year.

“The team will continue to diversify their customer base and product offering. The sky is the limit for this team and whatever we decide to do, I know we will succeed,” Mikolich says. “Continued modest growth and managing risk for the next few years will be important.”