Our Approach
Bankers’ Bank of the West provides lending services to help community banks thrive in their communities while maintaining an acceptable level of risk. Correspondent lending is a core function of our bank and we do not waiver in and out of the business as the economy or regulatory environment cycles like correspondent credit departments of larger or regional banks. Furthermore, by charter, we cannot ever compete for your customer’s business. Our practice is to retain loans on our own balance sheet. In some cases, we may sub-participate a portion of larger loans to other community banks, but always with the lead bank’s input and approval. We focus on making sound credit decisions on your timeline and have stacked desk authorities and frequent committee meetings to achieve your timing needs. We believe in building a relationship of trust and adding value by leveraging our lending limit and lending expertise with yours with the goal of keeping your customer in a community bank.
Participations
Our participation service allows you to retain customers that are outgrowing your lending limit. By combining your lending limit and ours, you can provide larger credit facilities in your market. At the same time, participations are a strategic tool you can deploy to manage loan type concentrations—or borrower, market, and industry concentrations. Best of all, by charter, we cannot ever compete for your customer’s business.
Participation types include but not limited to:
- Agricultural loans: livestock, crops, equipment, and farmland.
- Real estate loans: for construction and development, office, retail, and industrial.
- Commercial loans: equipment and operating lines of credit.
Bank Stock Loans
This service is a flexible, low-cost solution for the short- and mid-term capital needs of banks, holding companies, and bank owners for a variety of purposes. We can provide liquidity to an illiquid asset held at a corporate or individual level by leveraging the stock for many different purposes. Recent examples include:
- Term loan facility for bank acquisition.
- Line of credit for share repurchases from retiring shareholders.
- Line of credit to provide liquidity to employee stock option program.
- Term loan facilities to employees for exercising stock options.
- Term loan facility to transfer stock to the next generation.
Regulation O Loans
Rather than introduce Reg O concerns in today’s regulatory environment, you can call on us. We can provide loans to your directors for their commercial loan needs — and keep them from your competitors.
Municipal Leasing
Our turnkey program is designed to help community banks serve public-sector clients such as school districts, fire districts, townships, and other municipal entities. For many reasons, municipalities often prefer leasing equipment to buying it. The primary advantage to the municipal entity is cost savings. Generally, municipal leasing gives the entity access to the needed equipment without requiring an expensive, time-consuming vote of the community. In addition, leasing makes possible the acquisition of equipment over time. Other advantages of municipal leasing include:
- Affordable payments can be scheduled on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis depending on the municipality’s cash flow payment schedule.
- Repayment of capital equipment can be stretched out, thus conserving working capital.
- The municipal leasing program can cover multiple vendors to finance equipment needs.
- The municipal leasing program allows match funding of the equipment with a specified revenue stream.
Any type of equipment can be leased, from standard EMT vehicles or police cars for a municipality, to pipes in the ground for a water district. Beyond this, we can assist you through all aspects of the process including the initial request for proposal, funding, and servicing.
Interest Rate Hedging – Borrower’s Loan Protection
The traditional interest rate swap is a complex document with complex accounting implications. Our partners at PCBB have come up with a better solution that gives you the benefits of a swap without all the complexities. This is a tool to help you compete against big bank competition, Farm Credit, and others without increasing interest rate risk to your bank. It is also useful eliminating your borrower’s interest rate risk in loans that are typically adjusting every 3 or 5 years. That is one less credit risk to worry about. Here are a few highlights:
- Your borrower receives a long-term fixed rate
- Documentation is straightforward
- You receive a monthly adjustable rate
- Assistance is provided in explaining program to borrower
- You have no mark-to-market accounting
- Mobile app to help lenders quote rates in the field
Contact Us
To get the information you need on any services through Bankers’ Bank of the West please contact us.
Denver Headquarters
1099 Eighteenth Street
Suite 2700
Denver, Colorado 80202