Banker gets back in the game

When Manatee County banker Steve Jonsson spoke to a Wall Street Journal reporter in September 2010, he used words like “marked man, depressing and scarlet letter” to describe his life.

Jonsson referred to how he was doing in the 11 months after regulators shuttered the bank he co-founded and oversaw for a decade, Bradenton-based Flagship National Bank. The Journal story, published Sept. 27, 2010, was part of a series on people in the financial industry nationwide who struggled to find work in the recession.

But Jonsson has now started to write a new story, one with a happier ending: The longtime banker, who ran Bradenton-based Liberty National Bank prior to Flagship, recently joined the business and real estate banking team at Insignia Bank. The hire, which reunites Jonsson with friend and tennis partner Charlie Brown, Sarasota-based Insignia chairman and CEO, ends a three-year period where Jonsson was out of banking.