With over 25 years of leadership experience, Mr. Kuelbs has served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Investment Officer and Consultant for market-leading financial organizations, including public and privately held depository institutions, private equity backed ventures, specialty real estate finance companies and alternative asset management companies. A transformation and turnaround expert, he specializes in operational and financial restructuring, deals (IPOs, M&A and divestitures), asset liability management, liquidity strategy and credit risk solutions.

Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Kuelbs served as CIO at the Banc of California, where he led financial and capital markets restructuring and transformation strategies. He raised $500 million in common equity capital, while driving $6+ billion in balance sheet asset growth to release operating leverage from acquisitions and optimize financial metrics and earnings performance. He also led the divestiture of an alternative asset management company, The Palisades Group ($8 billion AUM), and divested Banc Home Loans, a residential mortgage bank ($30 billion funded).

As an Executive Management Consultant to Fannie Mae, Mr. Kuelbs led the implementation of the industry’s largest high touch residential mortgage servicing platform. This involved structuring joint ventures between Fannie Mae and three PE-owned high touch residential mortgage servicers to reduce the historically elevated defaults and losses for the $3.1 trillion Fannie Mae portfolio. Mr. Kuelbs also served as CFO and CIO at GMAC Bank, where he executed the strategy to lead the de novo bank through a phase of high growth scaling. He raised $2.5 billion in common equity capital to facilitate a comprehensive set of financing solutions to GMAC auto dealerships, commercial real estate finance and residential mortgage/home services, succeeding in scaling the balance sheet to $30+ billion in total assets over a three-year period through new loan programs.

Mr. Kuelbs earned a BBA in mathematics, quantitative analysis and finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA (concentration in finance) from the University of Notre Dame. He regularly provides industry insight on banking, mortgage finance and financial services regulation.