Mr. Farr: We opened our main office in August 2006 in Birmingham, Mich. In February 2007, we opened a branch office in Bloomfield Township. We lend money throughout Southeast Michigan. That being said, our primary target market is Oakland County. Oakland County ranks as one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and the Birmingham/Bloomfield communities are at the center of that affluence. Although we are in an affluent market, we operate an all-inclusive community bank business model. We are not a private bank, but we do use a private banking delivery platform that offers our retail and business customers a single point of contact at the bank to service all of their banking needs. This provides a one-stop shopping experience that we believe differentiates us from our competition, whether that competition is coming from big banks or other community banks.
We are currently approaching $100 million in assets. Our deposit relationships include both retail and commercial customers. A majority of our loan customers are businesses. We are very good at originating commercial loans of $250,000 to $2,500,000. Stating the obvious, credit quality is our primary focus. I believe we have been very fortunate since opening with regard to charge-offs. In addition, we currently have no nonperforming loans. Some of that is because we opened just as we were moving into a recession and as a result, our underwriting is based on current values and current cash flows. We are also fortunate in that we have very experienced lenders and credit officers.
TWST: Give us an economic overview of what the region you serve looks like and how it's performed over the past year. What are the growth areas in your geography?
Mr. Farr: The Michigan economy entered into a downturn before the rest of the country. This was driven by problems in the automotive sector and the residential housing market. The good news for us is that prices here were not as inflated as other markets. In addition, GM and Chrysler quickly moved through the bankruptcy process last summer. The end result is GM, Chrysler and Ford were able to substantially reduce their costs and improve efficiencies. They had already made substantial progress on quality, and GM and Ford in particular have an excellent product mix. In addition to the improvement in the automotive sector, we are experiencing growth in other sectors, such as technology and defense. Automation Alley is a nonprofit association of businesses whose mission is to drive growth in Southeast Michigan's economy. When it started approximately 11 years ago, it had 44 businesses as members. Today it has more than 1,000 members that work in conjunction with local government to attract new businesses from other parts of the country and overseas.
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