A State College bank is making its first play in the capital region, where it hopes to drum up home and business loans.
- Centre 1st Bank has hired Bob Rader, a longtime capital-area banker, to head up a new loan office at 1017 Mumma Road in Wormleysburg.
- Rader, who lives in Mechanicsburg, is president of the Centre 1st mortgage division.
- He was president of mortgage operations at Graystone before it was sold to Susquehanna Bank.
- “He’s a good guy to get this thing kicked off,” said Jack Infield, president of Centre 1st Bank and a former executive with Waypoint and Graystone banks.
- In addition, Centre 1st named capital-area real estate developer Mayur Patel of Laughner Patel Developers LLC to its board, Infield said.
What’s next: While the office is starting with a focus on home loans, it will add commercial banking over the next six to 12 months, according to Infield.
- The bank is already looking to hire commercial bankers and support staff in the Harrisburg area, Infield said.
- Target markets include commercial real estate, professional services firms, health care and nonprofits, Infield said.
- Once the Harrisburg-area office is fully staffed, Centre 1st plans to look east toward Lancaster and Philadelphia and then into the Lehigh Valley, Infield said.
- Centre 1st already has a full-service branch and loan production office in State College.
What’s Centre 1st: A division of Old Dominion National Bank, which is based in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
- Old Dominion and its parent, ODNB Financial Corp., are headed by chairman and CEO Mark Merrill, another veteran of Graystone and Waypoint.
- Infield and Merrill oversaw a recapitalization of Old Dominion in the mid-2010s and have since grown the bank from assets of about $35 million to more than $1 billion.
- Its main footprint is in the Washington, D.C., area but the bank has raised about 30% of its capital from investors in Pennsylvania, Infield said.
- The execs hope the bank reaches assets of $3 billion to $5 billion over the next three to five years, with about 30% of the growth coming from Pennsylvania.
- “There’s no reason why Centre 1st in and of itself can’t be an $800 million to $1.2 billion piece of the business,” Infield said.
