For Spring Bank Vice President and commercial lender Jasmine Mercado, banking has never just been about closing loans. It’s about teaching, connecting, and opening doors that have long been closed to too many. It’s also about remembering where she came from and the work ethic that shaped her.
Named one of Wisconsin’s Most Influential Latino Leaders for 2025, Mercado is still getting used to the spotlight. “I feel like I recently started getting recognized, probably last year… so it’s really new. So I’m excited, but still a newbie,” she said.
Finding purpose in a woman-led community bank
Mercado joined Spring Bank early in 2024, drawn by the leadership of President Heather Nelson and the institution’s intentionally small, community-centered footprint.
Spring Bank is a small community bank that primarily focuses on commercial lending, in many cases helping small businesses get started and grow.
After years in large regional banks where she often felt disconnected from her community, she wanted something different — something more human.
“I was coming to the office, just no community. My manager was out of state,” she said. “I came here and everything’s in one building. It’s just easier to get things done.”
Spring Bank’s approach also aligns with how she believes lending should work: with flexibility, creativity and a willingness to spend real time educating and guiding new entrepreneurs.
“We don’t have a really strict credit box, which I love, because then I can say yes a lot more,” she said. And there’s a lot more than just approving loans. “You always have to be like a problem solver and creative,” she said.
Building deals that others won’t touch
Mercado has quickly become known for her ability, and relentless willingness, to assemble complicated deals for entrepreneurs that others overlook.
She has closed more loans this year than in her entire career combined, she said. “I think I tripled or quadrupled my goal… to quadruple a loan goal in one year is insane,” she said.
Much of that work involves businesses on Milwaukee’s north and south sides — areas some banks avoid. Mercado does the opposite.
“We’re not scared of the inner city north side, inner city south side,” she said. “We definitely don’t shy away, and that has a lot to do with the president of the bank … we are willing to do deals that a lot of other banks don’t see value in.”
Her approach is relationship-driven and unapologetically hands-on. “You have to be willing to give them additional time,” she said. “A lot of bankers… just want to get the deal closed. They want the least resistance… and when you’re helping smaller businesses, that’s not how it works.”
A full-circle moment rooted in her grandmother’s restaurant
Mercado’s passion for small business owners comes from her own childhood, watching her grandmother work two jobs to give herself the resources to run a Mexican restaurant in Milwaukee.
“My grandmother was from Texas… she migrated over here to work in the crops, and then she ended up staying here and opened her own Mexican restaurant,” Mercado recalled. “I remember growing up and sleeping in the back of the Astro van… she went to GE in the morning at her full time job, and then came to the restaurant at night.”
That early exposure — “that’s my first experience with small business,” she said — gave her a lifelong soft spot for entrepreneurs who grind, hustle, and dream big despite limited resources.
Fighting bias and changing the commercial lending landscape
As a Latina in a field dominated by white men, Mercado has had to prove herself again and again.
“It’s always been challenging for me… because I’m a woman and I’m Hispanic, and I feel like the commercial lending space is highly dominated by white males,” she said. That’s part of why she helped create a network of 35 female commercial lenders across different banks who meet every other month to collaborate, share deals, and expand access to capital. “We need to build community… and we’re finding ways to be successful,” she said.
She is also driven by the inequities she saw early in her career — especially the financial barriers facing entrepreneurs who have individual taxpayer identity numbers (ITIN), rather than Social Security numbers. At larger banks, she said, “they don’t lend to ITIN holders… so I decided I need to find out where I can send these business owners, because they’re hardworking,” Mercado said.
That led her to community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and to a career focused on connecting people to the capital they deserve.
Education, trust, and the long game
For Mercado, lending is as much about education as it is about financing — especially for entrepreneurs who didn’t grow up with generational wealth or financial literacy.
“We don’t come from money… so how can I give them access to the information so that they can tweak this and this and that… so that they can get the lending that they need?” she said.
Sometimes that means spending as much as a year helping someone get their deal across the finish line. Sometimes it means sending them to a CDFI instead of keeping the loan herself. Every time, it means being honest, responsive and human.
And people notice: “I have gotten so many thank you notes and handwritten letters that I’ve never received before,” she said. One recent letter moved her deeply. “It would have been easy to be like everyone else and say we were too much trouble to be worthwhile, but thank you so much for sticking it out with us,” she recalled the letter saying.
A leader, a connector, and a mom of four
Mercado serves on four boards — all tied to financial access — and still juggles life as a mother of four and spouse of a Milwaukee firefighter. She jokes that she “always bites off more than I can chew,” but somehow makes it all work.
Ultimately, whether she’s closing a multimillion-dollar deal, walking a first-time entrepreneur through their projections, or pushing the banking industry to see potential where others see risk, Mercado’s motivation stays the same.
“I just love to give them the information on where they can get their funding… and sometimes it’s not from me,” she said. “It’s amazing to get that and to know you’re making a difference.”
