Georgia’s 219 state-based banks earned $590 million during the first quarter of 2014, a 17 percent improvement over the same period last year, according to information from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
About 65 percent of those banks posted increased earnings and 86 percent were profitable overall, said the Georgia Bankers Association in a quarterly overview.
The GBA also highlighted that loans grew by about 5.1 percent and deposits increased to 3.3 percent. Noncurrent loans also declined for the 16th consecutive quarter as more consumers made their payments on time.
Joe Brannen, president and CEO of Georgia Bankers Association, said the results are a positive sign.
“We like that loan growth was good and there was continued improvement in credit quality,” Brannen said in a statement.
In Savannah, First Chatham Bank announced improved first quarter operating results of $403 million in net income, its seventh straight quarterly profit, according to the bank’s CEO, Brian Foster.
“We exceeded our goals for the quarter, and we’re ahead of our goals for the first two months of the second quarter,” said Foster.
Foster said they also posted a 38 percent drop in interest expenses and a 16 percent drop in non-interest expenses due to the sale of its small business loan subsidiary, Quadrant Financial, which closed in the first quarter of last year.
“We shrank the bank’s balance sheet by $100 million, which enabled us to cut that expense by a huge amount, and at the same time we cut the overhead of owning that subsidiary,” said Foster.
He said First Chatham created an internal SBA lending arm in the third quarter of last year and has had success with contracting loans to qualified businesses looking to grow or expand.
Carver State Bank, another Savannah-based community bank, saw a 3 percent drop in net income from $42.6 million to $41.3 million over the year. The amount of noncurrent loans, meanwhile, dropped by 40 percent, a positive metric.
First Chahtam and Carver State Bank are among the few remaining independently owned banks based locally after the consolidation of several regional banks, including The Coastal Bank, which is being acquired by Ameris, and The Savannah Bank, whose name is changing to South State Bank later this summer.
Asked whether First Chatham would consider a merger in light of the evolving banking environment, Foster said his bank is still focused on being a local community bank.
“The advantage we will have going forward is that we’ll still be First Chatham Bank, and we’ll still have the same people,” said Foster. “We’ve seen a pick-up of numbers at our branches.”