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Who's who: Jack Antonini

Jack Antonini has emphasized customer service throughout his 29-year career, a characteristic that caught the eye of executives at Cardtronics in their search for a new chief to replace company founder Ralph Clinard. Antonini, a banking veteran who joined Cardtronics in late 2002, says it's 'the right time for future opportunities with ATMs.'

March 18, 2003

Perhaps no executive in the retail ATM industry has a resume filled with more acronyms than Jack Antonini, the new chief executive of Cardtronics.

Antonini's vitae chronicles a career with more than 20 years of experience in the banking industry, with job titles including VP, SVP, EVP, CFO, COO and CEO. His employers have included heavy hitters like USAA Federal Savings Bank, First USA and First Union Corporation.

Ralph Clinard, the outgoing CEO of Cardtronics, acknowledged that Antonini's background is a bit unusual for the ISO world, where executives tend to have more hands-on experience with merchant processing than with management.

Jack Antonini

A search firm helped Cardtronics narrow its search for a new leader to three candidates. Antonini's people skills were what made him stand out. "He's very people oriented. He likes dealing with people, and he's good at it," said Clinard, who will continue to serve on the company's board of directors.

That skill is evidenced by an encounter Antonini had at a party after he joined First Union in 1997. A former First Union employee who had been fired because First Union Mortgage had failed to meet performance criteria established by USAA, Antonini's previous employer and a First Union client, came up to Antonini and gave him a hug -- rather than an angry word, as might have been expected.

Putting people first

Antonini, a bearded man with a soft-spoken demeanor, inspires that kind of warm and fuzzy reaction from nearly everyone he encounters.

One of his biggest fans is Brig. Gen. Robert F. McDermott, who hired Antonini as chief financial officer of USAA Federal Savings Bank in 1985. Antonini is "not a numbers man, he's a people man," said McDermott. "More than anything else, he lives by the Golden Rule -- which was a perfect fit for my culture at the bank."

McDermott, a well-known champion of customer service, required all USAA employees to spend their first week in "culture training," learning how to treat customers and each other. USAA customers completed an annual survey on services, indicating whether they would recommend them to family or fellow USAA members. If a score didn't exceed 92 percent, the service was revisited. USAA Federal Savings Bank received the highest ratings from USAA members, with a 98.8 percent recommend rating. 

Antonini learned McDermott's philosophy well at USAA, Clinard said. "He has a real desire to give great customer service."

Antonini said he would have remained at USAA if McDermott, whom he taps as his most influential mentor and somewhat of a father figure, hadn't retired in 1993. The close connection is a mutual one. "I would have claimed him (as my son) any day," McDermott said.

Family man

Antonini finds ways to combine family and career -- whether it's establishing familial relationships with colleagues or sharing professional concerns with his wife Susie, whom he calls "a wonderful coach." An avid reader, Susie seeks out books with advice she thinks will benefit Antonini -- then highlights passages of interest or reads them to him.

"She'll read to me while I'm driving to help me make productive use of that time," Antonini said of the woman he first met in third grade. "She's been a very active participant in my career by talking about my challenges and helping me think them through."

Michigan natives, the couple and two young sons relocated to Texas in 1981 when Antonini accepted a job with First National Bank in Midland. Though it was initially difficult to "move from green trees to barren desert," Antonini said the move strengthened his family. "Without our extended families around, our core family became very close."

On the move

Following a stint in Kansas City, Mo., where Antonini served as vice president and CFO at Home Savings Bank from 1983 to 1985, the family returned to Texas so Antonini could work for McDermott at USAA.

During his 10-year tenure there, Antonini ascended through the executive ranks, ending up as CEO and taking it from $50 million to $10 billion in assets. In 1995, the year Money magazine declared USAA "the best bank in America," he left to join First USA Bank, a card issuer that had been wooing him for years.

First USA became a Bank One subsidiary in 1997 after Bank One made "an incredible offer," Antonini said. Though Antonini and three other executives were part of Bank One's agreement to buy the company, Antonini got a waiver and instead went to First Union to lead its Consumer Banking division.

After three years with First Union, Antonini's search for new entrepreneurial opportunities led him in 2000 to Globeset, Inc., an Austin, Texas-based provider of e-payment software. Like other technology companies, Globeset was hit hard by the economic downturn, and Antonini spent two years as a private consultant before joining Cardtronics in late 2002.

Opportunity beckons

"It looks like the right time for future opportunities with ATMs," he said. "Cardtronics is growing fast and is really in a position to impact the industry."

One opportunity that Antonini mentions is accepting deposits for financial institutions at Cardtronics ATMs, a scenario that will become more feasible when Congress passes Check 21 (the Check Truncation Act) - which most industry observers expect will happen later this year.

"When the Act passes, it will open up a whole new arena for partnerships between financial institutions and independent deployers," Antonini said. "Most financial institutions will want to offer deposits to their customers in more locations at a lower cost - but they won't want to send them to other banks' ATMs."