Back to Business As Usual for SWFL Banks

Southwest Florida’s banks are coming out of the recession into a new lending landscape, the Fort Myers News-Press says.

Fort Myers-based Premier Community Bank, for example, has had two bumps upward over the past year in its Bauer Financial stability rating.

Most recently Premier, a community bank with branches in Fort Myers and Lehigh Acres, had its rating increased in the fourth quarter from three and a half to four stars: the coveted level at which Bauer recommends a lender as safe and stable.

“We’re actually coming out of the recession and the problems related to the downturn in property values,” Premier chairwoman and CEO Brenda O’Neill said. “We’ve gotten back to business as usual.”

Now Premier is even looking to expand into Cape Coral.

With its newly rejuvenated home-building industry, the Cape “seems like it’s a natural place for us to expand into,” O’Neill said. “We’ve got a very robust mortgage lending program and we’re probably one of the few that still does construction lending.”

However, not everyone is following suite and increasing their ranks. National lender Bank of America sent a letter last week to its Pine Island customers telling them the branch there is closing “as fewer customers have been visiting us here and instead are using online and mobile banking.”

The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., on the other hand, is steadily expanding in the region.

“We want to continue to build out our footprint on the west side of Florida,” said Michael Gray, Chase market manager for Florida’s west coast. “We feel Chase is a bank that customers should have access to throughout the state and we want to ensure people on the west coast have that access.

Mark Morris, a former banker who is now an agent with Sands Commercial Group at VIP Realty in Fort Myers, said Chase is “picking their locations pretty carefully” and going for prime locations: “If you’re really in the retail banking business, and they are, obviously, you want to have a high traffic location, preferably on an interchange. They’re absolutely homing in on key parcels.”

Bank customers are increasingly doing transactions at ATM’s or online, he said, but “I think you do need to have a freestanding facility, and you have to have staff. Consumers are fickle. They want it all.”