WARSAW, N.Y. — Financial Institutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISI), parent company of Five Star Bank, recently announced that it has added Gary Pacos as chief risk officer. In his role, Pacos is responsible for all aspects of the organization’s risk-management function including identifying, measuring, monitoring, and managing risk throughout the company. Pacos arrived at Five Star […]
WARSAW, N.Y. — Financial Institutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISI), parent company of Five Star Bank, recently announced that it has added Gary Pacos as chief risk officer.
In his role, Pacos is responsible for all aspects of the organization’s risk-management function including identifying, measuring, monitoring, and managing risk throughout the company.
Pacos arrived at Five Star Bank with 34 years of progressive experience in banking, including spending the first 17 years of his career in compliance, consumer credit, audit and operations roles at HSBC Bank USA. In 2006, he took the role of deputy chief compliance officer at M&T Bank, and then joined First Niagara Bank, where he ascended to chief compliance officer, according to a Financial Institutions news release. After KeyBank’s acquisition of First Niagara, Pacos stayed on with KeyBank as the SVP, compliance executive for fair & responsible banking, risk evaluation & assurance, overseeing fair lending and compliance testing, until 2020.
For the last two and a half years, Pacos has been serving as the chief compliance officer of Bank OZK, a public bank based in Little Rock, Arkansas with more than $27 billion in assets. He made significant contributions to strengthen that bank’s compliance-management systems, worked closely with regulators and supervisors on behalf of the bank, and led and developed a team of professionals, per the release.
Pacos had a distinguished career serving the nation in the United States Army as a senior army aviator rising to the rank of major. He continued his service to the country for many years, remaining in the New York Army National Guard until he ultimately retired in 2008, according to Financial Institutions.
A native Western New Yorker, Pacos is based in Five Star Bank’s Buffalo–area regional office in Amherst. He is a graduate of SUNY Fredonia.
As chief risk officer, Pacos succeeds Randy Phillips who chose to transition to the newly created position of deputy chief credit officer for Five Star Bank.
Financial Institutions, based in Warsaw in Wyoming County, has about $5.8 billion in total assets, offering banking, insurance and wealth-management products and services through a network of subsidiaries. Its Five Star Bank unit provides consumer and commercial banking and lending services to individuals, municipalities, and businesses through its Western and Central New York branch network and has commercial loan-production offices in Syracuse and Baltimore, serving the Central New York and Mid-Atlantic regions, respectively. Five Star Bank’s CNY branches include offices in Auburn, Waterloo, Geneva, Ovid, Horseheads, and Elmira.