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NorthEast Community Bancorp Inc. is ready to make a gutsy move — an aggressive push into Boston that also involves originating its first single-family mortgages in roughly two decades.
July 14
Add NorthEast Community Bank in White Plains, N.Y., to the growing list of federally chartered thrifts converting to state charters.
The thrift said late Tuesday that it has filed an application with the the New York State Department of Financial Services to switch to a state savings bank charter in the second or third quarter of 2012.
NorthEast has four branches in New York and two branches and a loan production office in Massachusetts. Kenneth A. Martinek, the president and chief executive of the $449 million-asset thrift and its holding company, NorthEast Community Bancorp Inc., said in a news release Tuesday that its board has determined that switching would best position the bank "to compete in our market."
NorthEast is the third federally chartered thrift to
Federally chartered institutions often switch to state charters because they want to be closer to their regulators and because state examination fees are typically lower.
State regulators have also become more aggressive in encouraging thrifts to switch charters since the Office of Thrift Supervision was eliminated in July as part of the Dodd-Frank Act and merged into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.