Commercial loans and leasing—Our commercial loans, which are generally
made to growing companies and middle-market businesses, include equipment loans
and leases, secured and unsecured commercial and working capital lines of credit,
formula-based loans, mortgage warehouse lines, taxi medallion loans, letters
of credit, SBA product offerings and business acquisition finance credit facilities.
Commercial real estate loans—We offer term financing for the acquisition
or refinancing of properties, primarily rental apartments, mixed-use commercial
properties, industrial properties, warehouses, retail shopping centers, free-standing
single-tenant buildings, office buildings and hotels. Other products that we
provide include real estate secured lines of credit, acquisition, development
and construction loan facilities and construction financing. We make commercial
real estate loans secured by both owner-occupied and non-owner occupied properties.
National Commercial Lending Platforms—Through the Bank's three commercial
lending subsidiaries, we provide municipal and equipment financing on a national
basis. Pinnacle Public Finance, Inc. ("Pinnacle"), headquartered in
Scottsdale, Arizona, offers essential use equipment financing to municipalities
through loan, bond refunding and direct finance lease structures. United Capital
Business Lending, Inc. ("UCBL") offers small business equipment leases
and loans with a primary focus on franchise equipment finance. Bridge Capital
Leasing, Inc ("Bridge") provides transportation equipment finance
through loan, direct finance lease and operating lease structures. UCBL and
Bridge are headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland; effective January 1, 2016,
these entities were merged into a single legal entity, Bridge Funding Group,
Inc. In 2015 we acquired the Small Business Finance Unit ("SBF") of
CertusHoldings, Inc. (see Note 3 to the consolidated financial statements),
enabling us to expand our small business lending platform on a national basis.
SBF offers an array of SBA, and to a lesser extent, USDA products. We typically
sell the government guaranteed portion of the loans SBF originates, and retain
the unguaranteed portion in portfolio. We also engage in mortgage warehouse
lending on a national basis.
Residential mortgages—We purchase residential loans through select correspondent
channels to diversify our loan portfolio, both by product type and geographically.
While the credit parameters we use for purchased loans are substantially similar
to the underwriting guidelines we used for originated loans, differences include:
(i) loans are purchased on a nationwide basis, while originated loans have been
limited to Florida and New York; (ii) purchased loans and loans originated for
portfolio, on average, have higher principal balances than loans originated
for sale; and (iii) we consider payment history in selecting which seasoned
loans to purchase, while such information is not available for originated loans.
We do not originate or purchase negatively amortizing or sub-prime residential
loans.
Home equity loans and lines of credit are not a significant component of the
new loan portfolio.
Consumer loans—We offer consumer loans to our customers for personal,
family and household purposes, including auto, boat and personal installment
loans.
Loan servicing—We entered the residential mortgage servicing business
in 2013; we have acquired servicing portfolios and have retained servicing on
residential loans originated and sold into the secondary market. We anticipate
growing this business at a moderate pace, depending on market conditions, to
take advantage of existing mortgage servicing capacity.