In April, U.S. Bank announced Dan Son as the new head of its Working Capital Finance division. Son replaces Sam Philbrick, who retired after 45 years in banking, including 18 years at U.S. Bank in which he helped grow the asset-based finance business into a top national franchise. 

Son is responsible for the development, coordination and delivery of working capital solutions from across the bank for clients. The Working Capital Finance division includes several established product verticals, including:

• Asset-Based Finance. The bank’s flexible asset-based financing solutions provide clients – including many midsize firms – a stable financing source through business cycles. 

• Supply Chain Finance & Receivables. U.S. Bank supply chain finance & receivables capabilities improve cash flow for companies and their suppliers by optimizing payment terms for both parties. 

• Trade Services. Trade finance experts provide robust trade services to importers and exporters, leveraging a network of partners across six continents. 

Son joined U.S. Bank in 2019 and most recently led sales and origination for Working Capital Finance and was previously head of the bank’s global banking division. Son played a key role helping U.S. Bank clients navigate supply chain challenges with innovative financing solutions throughout the pandemic. Prior to U.S. Bank, Son held transaction banking roles across seven different countries and held leadership roles in global financial institutions, global payments, and trade finance at Wells Fargo, including nearly a decade in Hong Kong. 

Can you just tell us a bit about your career trajectory?

Son:  I’ve lived in a lot of different places. Growing up, I was mostly in Australia, but I spent a quarter of my life in Latin America, a good chunk of it in Asia and here in the U.S. I started in banking a little later in life.

While still in university in Australia, I started my career in manufacturing. I had an opportunity to go through a lot of different functions in that world, from procurement to export sales to treasury. I got a real good flavor of how a company actually operates in terms of their total ecosystem, and that’s an important backdrop in terms of my career journey.  From that experience, I started my own trading company in Panama. I started importing textiles from China and exporting that out to different parts of Latin America.  Textiles was already fairly consolidated by then as I got into that business perhaps a little too late, but I got creative. I got into media storage products after textiles, this is when blank CDs and DVDs were on the rise, so I was importing those, and then, of course, exporting and selling them throughout Latin America.

I got into banking sort of by accident. I was already about 30 by then. My wife was a banker, and it was my turn to support her career. That’s how we landed in Charlotte, initially. The first area of banking I entered was internal audit.  And that was probably a blessing in disguise in that, not knowing banking, but starting in an area like internal audit, not only did I get an appreciation from a risk management perspective, but I got to see the end-to-end of banking across different functions, whether it be a front-office function, a back-office function, a corporate finance function. 

When I got into the business side of banking, that’s when I started to connect the dots with being an end user and seeing actually how it works from a provider side of things or a financing side of things.  So it was a bit of an epiphany along the journey. Since then, I’ve done a lot of different things, anchored around working capital finance and transaction banking.  It’s because of these experiences that I’m thrilled to lead our work to meet the evolving working capital needs of our clients. We’re bringing the full capabilities of the bank to do this.   

Could you tell us a bit about your long-term and short-term goals for the business?

Our number one goal is to further strengthen our muscle memory around organic growth by doubling and tripling down on our core competencies and executing well for our clients. And what we do well is delivering interconnected solutions. From a client’s perspective, it doesn’t matter how you’re structured or how you’re organized internally. But we’ve adapted to how they view and manage working capital across the spectrum.

I’m going to be a panelist at the SFNet Supply Chain Finance Conference on September 8. It ties in well to how we have reimagined based on how clients think about working capital. By taking a menu of solutions approach across the working capital spectrum, it will help us deliver solutions our clients need and want more efficiently.

If we do this well, then it will allow us over the long term to continue reinvesting in the business and expand our menu of working capital finance solutions for our clients to address changing needs or to better address ongoing ones.

How has the role of working capital finance evolved in response to recent economic volatility and supply chain disruptions?

It has evolved a lot, but all positive. I think across any company, working capital or the managing of working capital is top of mind because it’s such a critical core, day-to-day activity that a client needs or a company needs to be on top of. 

I think the current environment and all the supply chain disruptions, starting from COVID, have heightened the awareness around the different types of working capital solutions out there. If you fast forward to now, it’s actually provided the agility that companies have in terms of meeting specific needs in a fast-changing environment or to manage in response to a particular geopolitical or macroeconomic event. I think the importance of supply chain resiliency has become much more top of mind for companies as well, and a lot of the working capital finance solutions are just really a means to an end. They’re tools to help clients strengthen their supply chain resiliency. 

It’s about how do I create more of a win-win situation to strengthen my entire supply chain ecosystem? 

One quick example: these working capital finance solutions, typically from a working capital optimization perspective, were already well known and important to help my payables get extended or my receivables to be accelerated, and that’s still a very important value proposition with these solutions.  But, the same solutions are also used to improve supplier relationships, provide more competitive terms to clients, and expand into new client markets. So there’s a sales enablement angle to these solutions as well.

I think what’s happened in the last few years and, obviously, what’s happening right now is the importance of these solutions has been top of mind.  I’ve seen a lot more demand for working capital solutions for holistic reasons now than ever before.

What sectors are currently showing the strongest demand for working capital solutions?

We see it pretty much across the board. Look at tariffs. Outside of services, everyone is subject to tariffs. If I had to pick out a couple of specific industries, I think healthcare is one industry where we’ve seen a lot more demand for different types of working capital finance solutions. 

I would also say the technology space and related areas such as data centers is another, which is commensurate with how developed economies are evolving from the technology perspective.

What trends are you seeing in borrower behavior or expectations that secured lenders should be paying closer attention to in 2025 and beyond?

I think the big topic right now, and it has been for maybe the last two years or so, is the rise in private credit/private capital.  And with that introduction you’re starting to see different types of combined structures or hybrid structures that are actually enabling clients to get more competitive offerings, to address the same problem in slightly different ways.  And I think the collaboration with private credit is going to be increasingly an important one for traditional banks. This can create opportunities for clients with more options in competitive offerings from a secured lending perspective, which might create better pricing and structures for companies.

I think the need for working capital is going to continue to increase and with the current environment, it’s going to be more important than ever. 

While the different players in the secured lending space have areas where we’re directly competing, I think there’s a need as an industry to work well together in the interest of the client.  We all have a vested interest in making sure that the industry is a healthy one. There are different ways to complement and partner with each other. 

What role has mentorship played in your career?

Mentorship has played an enormously important role in my career. I’ve always had outside mentors that I’ve relied on, but I’ve also had fantastic champions and sponsors within the banks that I’ve worked for. I spend a lot of time mentoring others as well because it’s important to develop and strengthen the next generation of working capital leaders. But I find that I end up learning much more from my mentees in how to be a better leader.

What can you be found doing when you’re not hard at work at U.S. Bank?

I love a lot of different sports, both watching and participating. Growing up in Australia, I’m a big Rugby fan. I’ve been following my local team since I was 9 years old and will still get up at 3 a.m. in the morning to watch a live game from the U.S. I love playing golf at my local club, but mostly love playing a round with my 11 year old son. 

I just enjoy other people’s company in general, whether it be friends, family or colleagues. I spend a lot of time with my colleagues outside of work as well; it’s something that I enjoy very much personally.