Howard Bancorp, Inc. was incorporated in April 2005 under the laws of the
State of Maryland to serve as the bank holding company of Howard Bank. The Company’s
primary business is owning all of the capital stock of Howard Bank. In addition
to regulation of the Bank, as a bank holding company registered under the Bank
Holding Company
oward Bank is headquartered in Ellicott City, which is located in Howard County,
Maryland. The Bank has branches in Howard County as well as in Anne Arundel
County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Cecil County and Harford County in
Maryland and one branch in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We engage in a general
commercial banking business, making various types of loans and accepting deposits.
We have traditionally marketed our financial services to small and medium sized
businesses and their owners, professionals and executives, and high-net-worth
individuals (the “mass affluent”), and have recently expanded to
meet the financial needs of consumers generally.
Our core business strategy involves delivering advice and superior customer
service to clients through local decision makers. We combine the Bank’s
specialized focus on both local markets and small and medium-sized business
related market segments with a broad array of products, new technology and seasoned
banking professionals to position the Bank differently from most competitors.
Our experienced executives establish a relationship with each client and bring
value to all phases of a client’s business and personal banking needs.
To develop this strategy, we have established long-standing relationships with
key customers in the community and with local business leaders who can create
business opportunities. Since opening our residential lending division in 2014,
we have extended our focus to residential mortgage lending as well.
Our primary source of revenue is net interest income, with fees generated by
lending, mortgage banking and depository service charges constituting a smaller,
but growing, percentage of revenues. We have positioned the balance sheet to
hold a high percentage of earning assets and, in turn, to have those earning
assets dominated by loans rather than investment securities. Generally speaking,
loans earn more attractive returns than investments and are a key source of
product cross sales and customer referrals. Certain economic conditions may
favor investments over loans, such as poor corporate earnings, downturns in
real estate cycles and other general slowing economic conditions. At all times,
our loan and investment strategies seek to balance the need to maintain adequate
liquidity via excess cash or federal funds sold with opportunities to appropriately
leverage our capital.
Our strategic plan focuses on enhancing stockholder value through market share
growth as reflected in balance sheet growth, related revenue growth and resulting
growth in operating profits. We continue to expand our branch locations both
through opening new branches and acquiring branch offices via acquisition. In
2014 we opened a de novo branch in Bel Air, Maryland, acquired a branch in Havre
de Grace, Maryland, and added five new locations with our FDIC-assisted acquisition
of NBRS Financial Bank (“NBRS”). In addition in 2015 we added four
branches in the Patapsco Bancorp merger, three in Baltimore County and one in
Baltimore City. We plan to open additional branches in the counties where we
now operate and contiguous counties over the next several years, however, other
than a new location in Columbia, Maryland that we expect will open in 2017 we
currently have no definitive plans or agreements in place with respect to any
other additional branches. Our long-term vision includes supplementing our historically
organic growth with strategically significant acquisitions. We believe that
acquiring other financial institutions - in whole or in part (through business
line spin-offs, branch sales or the hiring of teams of individuals) will allow
us to expand our market, achieve certain operating efficiencies, and grow our
stockholder base and thus our share value and liquidity. We believe that our
demonstrated expertise in commercial lending, deposit gathering (especially
non-interest bearing transactional deposits), our demonstrated ability to attract
additional investment and capital, and community leadership positions us as
an attractive acquirer. We also anticipate that increasing our capital levels
will give us the ability to continue our organic asset growth and expand our
relationships with key clients through a larger legal lending limit.
Our primary market focus is on making loans to and gathering deposits from
small and medium size businesses and their owners, professionals and executives,
and high-net-worth individuals in our primary market area. Our loans are made
to customers primarily in the Greater Baltimore market. Our lending activities
consist generally of short to medium term commercial lending, commercial mortgage
lending for both owner occupied and investor properties, residential mortgage
lending and consumer lending, both secured and unsecured. A substantial portion
of our loan portfolio consists of loans to businesses secured by real estate
and/or other business assets.
%
0.82% 