Solera to Buy $12 Million in Deposits from Liberty Savings Bank

Solera National Bancorp (SLRK) in Lakewood, Colo., is revisiting a deal that regulators blocked three years ago, with a few modifications.

The company has agreed to buy about $12 million of deposits from Liberty Savings Bank's Lakewood branch for an undisclosed price.  The companies expect to close the deal by June 30.

Solera says the purchase of 800 accounts will increase its core deposits by 18% and reduce its cost of deposits by 5 basis points.

"It's a nice fit for us because it helps us round out our core funding base," Douglas Critchfield, Solera's president and chief executive, said in an interview. "Liberty's cost of deposits has traditionally been lower than Solera's, so we hope it will be a help on the cost-of-funds side for us as well,"

The new agreement revisits a 2010 deal between the companies, where Solera would have bought all of the deposits — roughly $40 million — and $30 million in loans from Liberty's Lakewood branch.

Regulators never approved that agreement, Critchfield said, though he is optimistic that the new transaction will go forward.  In the previous agreement, Solera planned to buy all of the branch's deposits, while this deal is excludes certificates of deposit. A 2010 cease-and-desist order between Solera and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was terminated last June.

Solera has $155 million in assets and one branch, in Lakewood. Liberty, based in Wilmington, Ohio, has $552 million in assets and 13 branches in Colorado, Ohio and Florida.