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Lending surged at Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pa., this spring, allowing the $3.8 billion-asset company to report profits of $8.2 million in the second quarter, up 26% from the same period in 2012.
July 16 -
The $3.5 billion asset company will invest in Religare Enterprises, an Indian firm that is applying for a banking license in India, Customers said Thursday. It will spread the investment out over the next 18 months.
June 27 -
The chief executive and three directors of Atlantic Coast Financial (ACFC) are leaving the company after shareholders rejected a proposed sale to Bond Street Holdings earlier this month.
June 21
Customers Bancorp (CUBI) in Wyomissing, Pa., has opened a loan production office in north Philadelphia with the goal of providing affordable loans to lower-income minority communities.
Customers said Thursday that it plans to offer $300 million in mortgage and small-business loans to underserved populations over the next three years. The office will open within the next two weeks, the bank said.
"We believe that certain lower-income African-American and Hispanic areas in Philadelphia are extremely underserved," Jay Sidhu, Customers' chairman and chief executive, told American Banker. "Our company is very much oriented toward becoming a strong community bank in all our markets."
Residential mortgages are a recent addition at Customers. Before the third quarter of 2012, Sidhu says, Customers was primarily a business bank and multifamily lender. "To really serve the underserved, you also have to be a mortgage lender," Sidhu said. "And as well as being profitable, in this kind of regulatory environment it's a prudent thing to do for a growth-oriented bank."
The affordable lending programs are part of Customers' broader community outreach efforts. It has already provided low- and moderate-income students in the Philadelphia area with $25,000 in scholarships, the company said. It is also seeking a $500,000 grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh to support the Walnut Park Plaza project in Philadelphia.
Customers is the holding company for Pennsylvania's 12th-largest bank, with assets of $3.5 billion.
