Southern First Bancshares Inc
Southern First Bancshares, Inc., headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina,
is a bank holding company incorporated in March 1999 under the laws of South
Carolina that owns all of the capital stock of Southern First Bank (the “Bank”),
a South Carolina state bank, and all of the stock of Greenville First Statutory
Trust I and II (collectively, the “Trusts”). The Bank is a commercial
bank with nine retail offices located in Greenville, Columbia and Charleston,
South Carolina. The Bank is primarily engaged in the business of accepting demand
deposits and savings deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(the “FDIC”) and providing commercial, consumer and mortgage loans
to the general public. The Trusts are special purpose subsidiaries organized
for the sole purpose of issuing trust preferred securities.
We operate our Bank using a simple and efficient style of banking that is focused
on providing core banking products and services to our clients through a team
of talented and experienced bankers. We refer to this model as “ClientFIRST”
and it is structured to deliver superior client service via “relationship
teams,” which provide each client with a specific banker contact and a
consistent support team responsible for all of the client’s banking needs.
We believe this model results in a consistent and superior level of professional
service that provides us with a distinct competitive advantage by enabling us
to build and maintain long-term relationships with desirable clients, enhancing
the quality and stability of our funding and lending operations and positioning
us to take advantage of future growth opportunities in our existing markets.
We also believe that this client focused culture has led to our successful expansion
into new markets in the past, and will enable us to be successful if we seek
to expand into new markets in the future.
Our ClientFIRST model focuses on achieving cost efficiencies by diligently
managing the growth of our number of employees and banking offices. We have
historically insisted that the identification of talented bankers drives our
growth strategy, as opposed to a more general desire to enter a specific geography
or market. This strategy translates into a smaller number of brick and mortar
offices relative to our size and compared to peer banks, but larger overall
deposit balances in our offices as compared to peers. As a result, our offices
average approximately $103 million in total deposits. We believe this style
of banking allows us to deliver exceptional client service, while achieving
lower efficiency ratios relative to our local competitors.
We emphasize a range of lending services, including real estate, commercial,
and equity-line consumer loans to individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses
and professional firms that are located in or conduct a substantial portion
of their business in our market area. Our underwriting standards vary for each
type of loan, as described below. Because loans typically provide higher interest
yields than other types of interest-earning assets, we invest a substantial
percentage of our earning assets in our loan portfolio.
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