Texas Capital Bank’s Anna Alvarado: “Lawyers are expected to be strategic partners”

Anna Alvarado

Anna Alvarado, the general counsel of Dallas-based Texas Capital Bank, had humble beginnings: Picking grapes with her parents, who were immigrant farmworkers in California. But she has played an important part in the bank’s transformation. Last month, it closed its $3.4 billion sale of insurance premium finance unit BankDirect Capital Finance to a subsidiary of Truist Financial Corp., enabling it to re-focus its capital and expenses in line with its strategy of creating the state’s flagship full-service financial services firm. Alvarado talks about that transaction as well as the beginning of her legal career, trends she sees in banking and what a potential recession will do to the industry.

What were your parents’ professions? 

Farmworkers. They immigrated from Mexico to the San Joaquin Valley (central California) to pick grapes and other fruits and vegetables grown in that region. Picking grapes was my first job.