Home mortgages, auto loans, installment credit – they may be taken for granted today, but before this son of Italian immigrants came along, such things didn’t exist. Amadeo Peter Giannini – A.P. to his friends – revolutionized the banking world by focusing on “the little people.” Giannini passed away in 1949 at the age of 79. By that time, the bank he had founded, the Bank of America, had become the largest bank in the world, with $7 billion in assets and more than 525 branches in over 300 American cities. Today, Giannini stands out as one of TIME Magazine’s Builders and Titans of the 20th century – the only banker to make this list of the century’s most 100 important people.

He never dreamed of being a banker when he was a child, but today, there is nary a student of retail banking who does not know the incredible story of this determined entrepreneur. A son of poor immigrants, Giannini helped build the first national system of banks for the ordinary person, all the while fueling California’s economic development and inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs. What were Giannini’s secrets for success?

Giannini was born in 1870 in San Jose, California, to the son of recent immigrants from Genoa, Italy. His father, Luigi, was a farmer who had grown up in Ligure, a small village that today is home to just 500 people. His mother, Virginia Demartini, married Luigi when she was fourteen years old and he was 29. Together, the two decided to leave Italy and head to America in the hopes of making a fortune. With the little money they had collected from relatives, Giannini’s parents rented a house with a few rooms. After six months of renovations, they had transformed it into a functioning inn with over twenty rooms. It was in that inn that the young Giannini was born.

The family inn continued to grow and eventually became a hotel. Luigi sold it after a few more years and bought a 40-acre plot of land. It seemed that the family was finally living their dreams. That is until one day, when Luigi got into an argument with an employee over a simple one-dollar debt and wound up getting killed. It was a massive blow for the seven year old Giannini, who witnessed the tragic event before his very own eyes. In that instant, his 22 year old mother had become a widow.

Virginia later remarried to Lorenzo Scatena, who was both a farmer and the owner of a small produce grocery business. She convinced her new husband that produce was more profitable than farming, and so the family moved to San Francisco in 1882 in order to be nearer to the port. When Giannini was 14 years old, he left school and went to work full time for his stepfather.

For the next five years, Giannini devoted himself to the store. He took on the job of public relations, writing letters to all their potential clients and suppliers and following up in person. When he was 19 years old, Giannini’s stepfather rewarded his hard work by making him a partner in the thriving business. Giannini now owned half of Lorenzo Scatena & Co. It wasn’t until he reached the age of 31 that Giannini decided to get out of the produce business. He made an announcement that he was “retiring”, but few believed he would be gone for very long. Indeed, the next phase of his life was when his real career would begin.

At the age of 32, after making a handsome profit in produce and having stepped back from the business world, Giannini thought he would have more time to devote to his own interests – reading, traveling and the like. But, fate would have other plans. He quickly began receiving offers from other businesses eager to snap him up, but there was one in particular that caught his attention; the Columbus Savings & Loan Association asked Giannini to join their board of directors.

The Columbus S&L was a modest bank headquartered in the Italian section of North Beach. Giannini decided to accept their offer, in the hopes that the position would allow him to both hold a prestigious title and also to help society. For the next two years, Giannini devoted himself to the bank and things seemed to be progressing smoothly. That is, until he began to encounter difficulties with the association’s other directors.

Giannini wanted to help hardworking immigrants like his parents, but the Columbus S&L had little interest in extending loans to anyone except businessmen and the already wealthy. In other words, you could only get money if you already had some money. This didn’t make sense to Giannini. However, his pleas to lend to the working class fell on deaf ears. And so, in 1904, Giannini raised $150,000 from his stepfather and ten other friends, and opened the Bank of Italy.

The Bank of Italy was located in a converted saloon right across the street from the Columbus S&L; even the saloon’s bartender was kept on in the role of assistant teller. It might not have been the most professional of ventures – he solicited business door to door at a time when doing so was considered unethical – but that didn’t matter. The Bank of Italy allowed Giannini to fulfill his dream of helping the working class. Within one year, deposits to this ‘bank for the little guy’ were exceeding $700,000.

By 1906, deposits to the Bank of Italy had surpassed $1 million. Giannini seemed to be on top of the world when disaster struck. On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was hit by one of the largest earthquakes in the city’s history; much of the city was destroyed. Whereas other banks took as long as one month to reopen, Giannini had reopened the Bank of Italy in just six days. He may have been operating from just a plank stretched across two barrels in the street, but for those who needed loans – and now, more than ever – that he was operating was celebration enough.

Over the next ten years, Giannini would open several other Bank of Italy branches throughout the city. In 1928, he approached the President of the Bank of America, Los Angeles, about a possible merger. When the merger was finalized, Giannini remained chairman of the new institution, but agreed to keep the name Bank of America as it was symbolic of the new bank’s broader mission.

Under Giannini’s leadership, the new Bank of America quickly became one of the only banks to reach beyond a single city. He founded TransAmerica as a holding company for his widening interests, which even included some overseas banks. TransAmerica was also the controlling shareholder of the Bank of America for a period, until the U.S. Congress stepped in to break it up.

He may have gained many opponents on his rise to the top for his use of unconventional tactics and his focus on the working class, but even as his monopoly expanded, it was hard to make the case that his actions were against the public interest. Today, as banks continue to diversify the range of services they provide, they are carrying out the legacy that was left behind by Giannini.

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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