Mr. Karas serves as Chief Lending Officer of TBK Bank, SSB. He joined Triumph in 2012 as Executive Vice President – Asset Based Lending for Triumph Commercial Finance with more than 30 years of experience in all aspects of commercial finance. Prior to joining Triumph, Karas served as Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Marquette Business Credit, where he led Marquette’s general factoring business as well as marketing for its asset based lending platform. Previously he served with GE Capital/Heller Financial as Managing Director of the Corporate Lending Group, then the Enterprise Client Group and finally Energy Financial Services. He began his career with JPMorgan Chase, formerly Chemical Bank, in New York and gained experience in credit, commercial and leveraged lending prior to opening Bank of America’s (formerly NationsBank) New York ABL office.
Mr. Karas is currently a member of the Commercial Finance Association Executive Committee and serves as chairperson of the organization’s Education Committee. He received his Bachelor of Science in Finance and Management from Temple University and his Master of Business Administration from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Mr. Copple joined Triumph as Executive Vice President – Equipment Finance for Triumph Commercial Finance in 2012, with nearly 22 years of experience in various aspects of equipment and transportation asset financing, to lead the company’s equipment finance efforts. Prior to joining Triumph, he was with People’s United Bank, a $33 billion bank headquartered in Connecticut. During his tenure as Vice President of the Transportation Division, he built the portfolio from $0 to $250 million. This portfolio consisted of small to medium size transportation companies located in the south central United States. In October of 2008, he was promoted to Vice President of the Construction Division of FFCI, where he was responsible for a $400 million construction portfolio also located in the south central United States. The construction portfolio was the largest branch of the company and was the most profitable division within FFCI. As Vice President of both the Transportation and the Construction divisions, Mr. Copple was responsible for all aspects of lending for FFCI including hiring, origination, underwriting, approval process (with individual authority of $2 million), operations management and servicing the portfolio. He was a part of the senior management team and a consultant for workout of large transportation accounts for the company nationwide. Mr. Copple began his management career at Associates Commercial Corporation which was later acquired by Citigroup where he was Vice President of Transportation Finance.
Mr. Copple received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Arkansas.
Jim Allin joined Triumph as the Senior Vice President – Asset Based Lending for Triumph Commercial Finance in September 2014. In this role, Mr. Allin oversees the business unit for all asset based lending and general factoring.
Prior to joining Triumph, Mr. Allin served as a senior vice president – asset based portfolio specialist for Bank of America where he was responsible for an approximately $1.4 billion portfolio in committed facilities. He has 27 years’ experience in asset based lending with stops at Bank of America and its predecessor institutions, CIT, GE and TBS. Before entering the asset based lending market, Mr. Allin spent seven years in international banking with Continental Illinois National Bank.
Mr. Allin received a bachelor of business administration degree from Texas Christian University and a master’s degree in international management from American Graduate School of International Management, now named Thunderbird School of Global Management.