Brian Plum has resigned as the CEO and president of Blue Ridge Bankshares, the holding company for Charlottesville, Virginia-based Blue Ridge Bank, according to a document the firm filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Plum notified the $3.1 billion-asset company July 12 of his departure, effective that day, according to the filing. The bank’s board named William Beale, CEO of its subsidiary, as Plum’s replacement.
Beale, who formerly served as the president and CEO of Chesterfield, Virginia-based Community Bankers Bank, has filled Plum’s shoes before. Blue Ridge tapped Beale in May to take over as CEO of the bank, while Plum remained president and CEO of the holding company.
Not mentioned in Monday’s filing is the departure of Kirsten Muetzel, president of the bank’s fintech division. Muetzel’s tenure with the bank ends this month, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Blue Ridge hired the former Federal Reserve staffer in January and tasked her with "strengthening regulatory compliance,” the bank said in a statement at the time.
The bank did not immediately respond to Banking Dive’s request for comment.
Blue Ridge, which operates a banking-as-a-service program, was singled out by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in September, when the regulator ordered it to improve its oversight of third-party fintech partnerships.
The OCC’s order didn’t detail a monetary penalty, nor did it disclose a specific problematic relationship. But Blue Ridge was the subject of an April 2021 letter the Student Borrower Protection Center and other advocacy groups wrote to the OCC over an “income-share” lending option the bank offered in partnership with the fintech MentorWorks, in which students pledge some of their income earned after graduation.
The OCC’s order also said it identified “unsafe or unsound practice(s)” in the bank’s anti-money laundering risk management, suspicious activity reporting and information technology controls.
Blue Ridge was ordered to obtain the OCC’s non-objection before entering into any new contracts with fintech partners or adding new products in cooperation with existing partners.
Muetzel and Plum told S&P Global in February that the firm was working to improve its internal controls before further expanding its BaaS partnerships.
Regulatory concerns also presumably contributed to the dissolution of a planned merger between Blue Ridge and FVCB in January 2022.
The banks delayed the transaction in November 2021 over “certain regulatory concerns” the OCC found with Blue Ridge. Neither institution detailed those concerns in publicly available writing.
Beale, meanwhile, was selected to “add depth and experience” to the firm, Blue Ridge Bankshares Chairman Mensel Dean said in a statement in May.
At the time, Plum’s move to the holding company meant he would “focus on broader strategy, technology and business line initiatives,” the company said.
