Bank’s SoCal Branches Reach Out to ‘Community’

0
Bank’s SoCal Branches Reach Out to ‘Community’
Stanford Kurland

What’s in a name? Well, if you ask some bank customers, a lot.

Banco Popular, which has 12 branches in Los Angeles County, has found that its name has turned off non-Hispanic potential customers, many of whom were unsure if the bank catered to non-Spanish speakers.

So, as part of a larger rebranding effort, the Puerto Rican bank last week officially changed the name of its Southern California branches to Popular Community Bank.

“We have seen that the name has been a bit of a hurdle with the non-Hispanic population,” said Manuel Chinea, senior vice president of the bank’s U.S. retail banking operations. “It sounds foreign. The objective behind this (name change) is to be more inclusive.”

To promote the new brand, the bank has launched an advertising campaign; become a sponsor of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; and refurbished many of its branch locations, including adding new signs, paint schemes and carpeting. Chinea said the bank also launched a Facebook page.

Banco Popular first entered the L.A. market in 1975 with a single commercial branch, and expanded its presence beginning in the late 1990s with a series of acquisitions. But executives noticed that after each acquisition, particularly the 2004 purchase of Quaker City Bank in Whittier, the bank saw many of its non-Hispanic customers leave.

“We ended up losing some relationships,” Chinea said.

Last summer, the bank tested the name-change strategy with a small number of Illinois branches and found an immediate increase in non-Hispanic customer accounts, as well as an increase in the size of new accounts. Chinea said the bank wanted to test it in a small market to ensure that it would not alienate Hispanic customers before rolling it out in Southern California, where the bank has 24 branches spanning Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

Asset Sale

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced last week that it has sold a package of distressed loans to a group of local investors.

Acorn Loan Portfolio Private Owner IV LLC, an L.A. entity partially backed by Oaktree Capital Management LP, paid $25.6 million for a stake in a portfolio of commercial real estate and construction loans with an unpaid principal balance of $158 million. The loans had been originated by FirsTier Bank, a Louisville, Colo.-based institution that was closed by regulators.

The sale was the first under the FDIC’s Small Investor Program, which attempts to move distressed assets from failed banks back into the private sector.

Under the deal, “Acorn will provide for the management, servicing and ultimate disposition” of the assets, the FDIC said.

High Yield

PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust, already sporting one of the top five dividend yields among L.A. companies, is giving its shareholders even more bang for their buck.

The Calabasas real estate investment trust, started by former Countrywide Financial Corp. executive Stanford Kurland, upped its dividend to 50 cents a share last week from 42 cents. Bloomberg analysts, meanwhile, project an additional increase to as much as 60 cents a share by early 2012 for the fast-growing mortgage investment firm.

Dividend yield measures the ratio of dividends paid by a company over one year compared with the total stock price, or how much stockholders get back for every dollar invested in the company.

With a share price just topping $16 a share, PennyMac had a yield of 10 percent prior to upping its dividend. That’s on the high side even for REITs, which under law must pay out 95 percent of earnings to shareholders to avoid corporate taxes. According to Bloomberg forecasts, the projected 12-month yield will rise to over 13.4 percent, which would be the second highest among local companies.

Bank Board

Professional Business Bank announced last week the launch of an advisory group focused on improving Pasadena’s local economy and promoting community issues.

The Professional Business Bank Community Board will be headed by Mary Lynn Lenz, chief executive of the bank, and includes 11 prominent members of Pasadena’s business and cultural communities. Among the board members are Scott McKibben, executive director of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association; Bruce Blomstrom, president of the Pasadena Bioscience Collaborative; and Joe Scully, president of Financial Guaranty Insurance Brokers.

The members each quarter will hold nonpublic meetings, which the board said in a statement will foster “an unrestrained exchange of ideas on local economic issues, potential solutions and new growth opportunities.”

C-Suite News

Pacific Western Bank, headquartered in Los Angeles, has hired Lynda Nahra as president of its Central Coast region. … HSBC Bank USA has appointed Arjan Van Den Berkmortel as regional president of commercial banking for the West Coast and Texas. He will be based in Los Angeles.

Staff reporter Richard Clough can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 251.

No posts to display