Bank of Hope
Korean American Los Angeles bank
Bank of Hope is an American bank, based in Los Angeles, that focuses on the Korean American community. The bank was first established on December 30, 1980, under the name Wilshire Bank.
On November 30, 2011, Nara Bank, which was established in 1989, merged with Center Financial Corporation, which was established in 1986. Nara Bancorp, Inc., changed its name to BBCN Bancorp, Inc. Center Bank changed its name to BBCN Bank. BBCN was an acronym for Business Bank of Center and Nara.
On February 15, 2013, the company acquired Pacific International Bancorp, the holding company for Pacific International Bank, a Washington state–chartered bank with four branches in the Seattle metropolitan area.
In August 2013, the company acquired Foster Bankshares, Inc., and became the largest Korean American Bank in Chicago.
In July 2016, BBCN Bank and Wilshire Bank merged and were rebranded as Bank of Hope, with Hope Bancorp, Inc., as the bank holding company.
In 2017, the bank almost acquired U & I Financial Corp, based in Seattle, but the acquisition was called off at the last minute.
The public source identifies “Bank of Hope” as korean American Los Angeles bank. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bank, Hope and Korean.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16826875. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2011, 1989 and 1986.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bank of Hope” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.