NewBridge acquiring Security Savings Bank

Greensboro's NewBridge Bancorp will buy coastal North Carolina's Security Savings Bank in a transaction that won't involve payment, NewBridge announced Thursday.

Security Savings Bank, based in Southport, has six branches and a loan office in Brunswick County. NewBridge says it will take on the bank's assets and loans but will not pay a premium. The bank said it anticipates the deal will be ordered by the N.C. Commissioner of Banks. 

The deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, will make NewBridge a $2 billion in asset bank.

Fifth Third nabs Charlotte banker for executive officer position

Fifth Third Bank has named Charlotte banker Frank Forrest to be its new chief risk and credit officer, the Cincinnati bank said this week.

Forrest has worked at Bank of America here in Charlotte in a number of risk management and commercial banking positions over the past 27 years. Before that, he was a bank examiner at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

In his new role, Forrest will report directly to Fifth Third CEO Kevin Kabat -- making him one of the bank's highest-ranking executives.

Clearview Wealth Management opens in SouthPark

Charlotte is home to a new wealth-management company.

Clearview Wealth Management said Tuesday that it has opened an office in SouthPark at 2115 Rexford Road.

A spokeswoman said the office has four full-time employees and that the company was created in February.

According to a press release, Eric Clark, Cheryl Sherrard and Treven Ayers formed the fee-only firm. All three are veterans of Rinehart Wealth Management.

Bank of America done cutting revenue generators, CFO says

Make money for Bank of America? Your group shouldn't be on the chopping block anymore, Chief Financial Officer Bruce Thompson says.

Bank of America is done targeting revenue generators as the bank continues through its massive cost cutting plan known as Project New BAC, Thompson said at an investor conference early this morning at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, according to a Bloomberg transcript.

Instead, the focus has shifted to back-office operations and support, he said.

"The remaining work to be done with the New BAC does not touch client facing people at all," Thompson said. "There should not be any revenue degradation because we're not touching the people that are responsible for originating revenues."

Expenses continue to be one of Bank of America's top priorities, nearly two years after launching Project New BAC. In an unscientific poll taken at the conference before Thompson spoke, more than half of the investors and analysts in attendance said costs were their top issue.

The bank is down more than 27,000 jobs since it began that September, including 4,000 in the first quarter. Bank of America has eliminated about $1 billion in quarterly expenses.

The company has also been under pressure to start increasing its revenue. To that end, the bank has added hundreds of small business bankers and bankers that deal with affluent customers.

"If we do this the way that we believe that we will, we should start to see revenues push forward not backward with the expense initiatives," Thompson said.

Bankers association goes farther out for meetings, but not ready for Bahamas yet

Five years ago, as the financial crisis was escalating, the North Carolina Bankers Association held its annual convention in the Bahamas, a place many Americans losing their homes to foreclosure would likely have been unable to afford to visit at the time.

Running June 21-25, 2008, the meeting at The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island took place three months after news that JPMorgan Chase agreed to save troubled investment bank Bear Stearns and two months before the federal government would take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“Set amidst the lush tropical splendor of the Caribbean, The Atlantis is an exhilarating adventure of thrills and discoveries!” read the association’s announcement to its members about the trip. “Interact with the sea’s most playful inhabitants. Plunge from great heights into an azure pool. Experience culinary delights surrounded by nature’s most beautiful wonders.”

It was a trip planned at least the year before, when the economy was in better shape. Since then, the association hasn’t returned to the Bahamas, opting instead to hold its conventions no more than one state away from North Carolina. For example, the group’s 2013 meeting, which is taking place this week, is being held in Hot Springs, Va., at The Homestead resort.

But in recent years, the association has been venturing farther for the trips. Last year’s was in the beach resort community of Hilton Head, S.C., and 2011’s was also at The Homestead.

It’s still no lush tropical splendor, but it's a change from 2009’s convention at The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill and 2010’s at Hilton Charlotte University Place, locations that projected a more frugal tone at a time when the banking industry was under heavy public scrutiny as the economy was coming undone.

In an email Monday, Nathan Batts, counsel for the association, pointed out that his group has been focused on keeping the costs of the trips low and holding them in places that are within driving distance.

"While the economy is now doing well in many areas and showing growth, there are large parts of our state that have yet to recover," he wrote. "Like our members, the NCBA has become increasingly focused on cost efficiencies, over the past five years especially."

Registration per delegate for the 2013 trip cost $525, with prices higher if spouses attend. Rooms at The Homestead start at $340 per day for a single, according to the association's meeting packet.

Lissa Lamkin Broome, director of the Center for Banking and Finance at UNC School of Law in Chapel Hill, said the scale of the association’s trips are “sort of following the economy.” After the Bahamas trip, the association chose “much more modest and much more local” venues, she said.

The conventions are part business, part diversion. This year’s event includes banking presidents as speakers, as well as a mixology class.

Batts is not ruling out having future meetings that might require a longer drive or even a plane trip.

“We may consider travel to a location that is farther away in future years to give our members some variety, since this is the one meeting of the year that we sometimes go out of state,” he wrote in an email, “but we will do so after analysis of many factors and careful negotiation of the costs.

"We are getting back to a point of normalcy, where being out of the office for an extended period is feasible, but, even if my association chooses to travel a more extended distance in future years, we will do so only after some extensive negotiations to keep the costs down.”

So, no island paradise for now. But there's always the chance that the mixology class will teach this year's attendees how to make Bahama Mamas.

Wells Fargo rolls out new website

Wells Fargo's new website has gone live, with a streamlined design centered around goals like home ownership, college savings, retirement and information security.

Shannon Lundgren

The new design is the culmination of about two years of work, which began shortly after Wells Fargo fully brought on Charlotte-based Wachovia onto its system, Shannon Lundgren, Wells vice president for product management, digital sales and service told the Observer on Monday.

That meant the combined Wells Fargo had a number of new products to integrate onto the website, which now gets about 60 million unique visitors per month.

The bank decided to go with an approach less product-centered and more information- and solution-centered, Lundgren said. For example, a section devoted to going to college will have pieces on budgeting and financial aid, as well as products ranging from renters insurance to student loans. Before, all of that would have been much more dispersed across the site, Lundgren said.

The site is also optimized for tablet computers. When viewed on a tablet, more features will use swipes over clicks, and have larger click targets, Lundgren said.

A fairly large team worked on the site, including employees in Charlotte and San Francisco. Wells Fargo has been preparing for the roll-out for a number of weeks. Last month, Wells had promised "sweeping changes" to the site in the coming weeks. Some of the bank's communications staff have been tweeting about the site with the hashtag #WFNewSite.

Bank websites, including Wells Fargo's, have most recently been in the news after strings of cyberattacks that have slowed them down to a crawl. Lundgren said this new design dealt with user experience, not infrastructure, but said that the bank has been steadily improving its security.

Pittenger to file bill that would repeal part of Dodd-Frank

U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger is planning to file a bill this week that would repeal a part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that requires banks to collect demographic data on small business loan applicants.

The section is intended to allow regulators to make sure banks aren't discriminating against minorities or women who are looking for capital for their businesses. That's already against the law. Similar data is already kept on mortgage applicants.

But Pittenger, a Charlotte Republican, said the additional requirement is burdensome, unnecessary, and that the government should not be in the business of dictating to banks who they should lend to.

"Let’s get back to the basics and let bankers be bankers," he said. "Frankly, the only issue that banks ought to be involved in is if somebody is creditworthy."

The portion of Dodd-Frank known as Section 1071 was cited by bank executives as an area of concern not long after the law was passed in 2010. They've argued that banks would lose the flexibility to structure commercial loans in the most reasonable way, in an effort to avoid the appearance of favoring one borrower over another. While mortgages are more or less a commodity, bankers say business loans can vary dramatically from one to the other.

Supporters of the provision, like current U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, say it's an important tool to monitor fair lending practices.

Pittenger said the bill is not intended to take away from fair lending oversight, but he denied that discrimination in loans is a problem. He said existing laws are already sufficient to make sure it's not happening.

He also said the provision would lead regulators to pressure banks to lend to people who aren't creditworthy.

"The government shouldn't be involved in forcing a social agenda on lending institutions," he said. "That’s how we got in that mess to begin with, we were loaning money to people that weren't creditworthy."

Pittenger is in his first term in Congress, representing south Charlotte, west and north Mecklenburg County and parts of Union and Iredell counties in a seat formerly held by Sue Myrick.

Pittenger serves on the House Financial Services Committee, and has been involved in the committee's hearings related to changing the Federal Housing Administration. He's also been vocally against the Dodd-Frank law and has called for ratcheting back "oppressive" bank regulations.

He served on the board of Charlotte-based Park Meridian Bank before it was acquired by Regions Financial in 2001. Pittenger said he's heard from a number of community banks worried about this provision in Dodd-Frank.