Amerant Bancorp in Coral Gables, Fla., has formed a mortgage joint venture.
The $8 billion-asset company said it will have majority ownership of Amerant Mortgage, which it created with a group of former bankers from City National Bank of Florida in Miami.
The former City National bankers are Howard Levine, Tony Eelman, Marshall Martin and Joe Keel. Amerant said its existing residential mortgage team will be rolled into the new joint venture.
Levine will be the joint venture’s chief revenue officer.
“It is evident that Florida’s residential real estate market is booming,” Millar Wilson, Amerant’s vice chairman and CEO, said in a press release Tuesday. “The ongoing positive sales trajectory, coupled with generationally low interest rates, which are expected to continue throughout 2021, has created unprecedented momentum in the residential mortgage origination space.”
Amerant Mortgage will offer a wide range of products, including conventional, government and jumbo loans.
