Our Company
We are a bank holding company headquartered in Harrogate, Tennessee. We incorporated in Tennessee in 1975 and we operate primarily through our wholly owned bank subsidiary, Commercial Bank, a Tennessee banking corporation organized in 1976. The Bank is a full-service community banking institution that offers traditional consumer and commercial products and services to serve businesses and individuals in select markets in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Our primary service areas in Tennessee include the Nashville MSA, the Knoxville MSA, and the Tri-Cities MSA. In addition, we serve Claiborne County, Cocke County, Union County, and Hamblen County, and their surrounding areas. In Kentucky, we primarily serve the communities in Southeast Kentucky, with branches in Barbourville, Corbin, Cumberland, Harlan, London, Middlesboro, and Pineville. In North Carolina, we serve parts of the Charlotte MSA, with branches in Shelby, Kings Mountain, and Gastonia. We also operate one LPO in Lincolnton, North Carolina.
Our Business Strategy
Our business strategy is to grow through both acquisitions and organically in our current markets and any new markets. We have been very successful with integrating our past acquisitions, consolidations and growth in new markets. We intend to execute our strategic plan through the following:
Shareholder Focus. Our focus is to provide consistent, long-term growth and returns to our shareholders including earnings per share, return on average assets and average tangible common equity growth. To accomplish these objectives, we carefully manage our net interest margin, credit quality, balance sheet and income statement growth and our efficiency ratio. We believe that our experienced leadership team, commitment to organic and acquisitive growth, and prudent risk management will allow us to consistently build value for our shareholders.
Our Growth Strategy. We intend to provide superior customer service while also continuing to grow our market share of deposits and loans in the markets we currently serve.
Emphasizing Commercial Banking in Local Communities. We operating as a community bank organization focused on meeting the specific needs of small and medium-sized businesses and individuals in our market areas. We provide a high degree of responsiveness and a wide variety of banking products and services to our customers.
Pursuing Growth Opportunities through Strategic Acquisitions and De Novo Expansion. We continue to selectively pursue strategic acquisitions and new market expansions through de novo openings to supplement organic growth in our legacy markets. Our organic growth has been complemented by synergistic acquisitions and de novo expansion. We seek to expand our operations in attractive and adjacent markets with experienced banking teams that are a cultural fit and knowledgeable of our target customer base. We may also make acquisitions or open additional offices in our existing markets. We intend to focus on acquisitions that provide meaningful financial benefits, long-term organic growth opportunities and economies of scale without compromising asset quality to the overall organization.
Core Values – Our mission is to create positive experiences for every customer, every day. Our Core values are to be knowledgeable, exceed expectations, be responsive, work as a team, be reliable, be positive and be friendly.
Our Competitive Strengths
We believe that the following strengths will help us execute our business strategy:
Experienced and Invested Leadership Coupled with a Distinct, Efficient, and Streamlined Customer-Focused Corporate Culture. Our Board has decades of combined business experience from a variety of backgrounds. Our directors actively participate in and support community activities, which we believe significantly benefits our business development efforts. Our executive leadership team is comprised of established industry veterans with a track record of profitable growth, operating efficiencies and strong risk management. In addition to our executive leadership team, we believe that we are supported by a deep and talented bench of market leaders, many of whom have been with us for much of our existence.
History of Successful Acquisitions and Integration. We have pursued a strategy of disciplined organic and acquisitive growth. Our management team has demonstrated success in identifying and integrating strategic acquisition targets that have either added density to our footprint or expanded our presence into attractive markets, to ultimately build long-term shareholder value.
Diversified Loan Portfolio. We have an attractive, commercially focused loan portfolio, with the portfolio consisting of a mix of owner-occupied CRE loans, non-owner occupied CRE loans, C&D loans, and commercial loans. We have grown loans organically as well as through acquisitions. We believe that our knowledgeable and prudent approach to commercial lending contributes to our relatively low loan losses caused by defaults.
Core Deposit Base. We have built a strong core deposit base by providing quality products and services to customers in our market areas. We offer retail deposit services through our existing branch network, as well as mobile and online banking services.
Prudent Credit Risk Management. We believe that we have a culture of well-developed risk management procedures at all levels of our organization. The loans in our loan portfolio primarily originate from borrowers within our footprint and are subject to a rigorous credit evaluation process that seeks to balance responsiveness with prudent underwriting and pricing practices. A centralized credit underwriting group underwrites all credit exposures, ensuring consistent application of credit standards.
Ability to Recruit and Retain Talented People. We believe the success of our business model is due to our ability to attract and retain talented bankers in each of our markets. Each of our six major geographic markets is headed by a regional bank president empowered yo serve the Bank’s growth in each market. We also focus on training and developing each employee to enable upward mobility within our organization as new job opportunities become available. We believe promoting employees from within is critical for core culture and motivating employees to develop, grow and stay with the Bank long term.
Scalable, Decentralized Operating Model. We operate each of our markets as individual markets, with an experienced market leader in charge of each market. Each of our market leaders and bankers is empowered to make local decisions up to specified limits set by our executive management based on experience and track record. We believe that the delivery by our bankers of in-market customer decisions, coupled with strong, centralized risk and credit support, allows us to best serve our customers. This operating model has been successful in our existing markets, and we believe it is highly replicable and scalable. This model can support our growth in existing and new markets either organically or through opportunistic acquisitions.