Six months after Umpqua Bank entered the northern Nevada market, the Oregon-based bank is holding its own in the fierce battle for deposits.
And like nearly every banker in town, its staff struggles to find well-qualified borrowers to help build its portfolio of business and commercial loans.
Umpqua Bank, headquartered at Portland, came to northern Nevada through its acquisition of the banking operations of the failed Nevada Security Bank, a hometown institution that sank under the weight of the collapsed market for real estate.
Since then, Umpqua has grown its deposits in northern Nevada by about 4.5 percent, says David Funk, senior vice president and regional manager of Umpqua's Nevada operations.
That's enough growth to keep the bank's market share about in the middle of the 12-bank donnybrook in northern Nevada. Umpqua Bank assumed $479.8 million in deposits when it took over Nevada Security Bank in June.
Funk, a veteran Reno banker who served as president of Nevada Security before he joined Umpqua Bank, describes the market for deposits as "very competitive and very rate sensitive."
In that environment, Funk says personal relationships are proving to be key.
"It's all a matter of service and people," he says. "A number of our former customers have come back."
While the Umpqua brand is new to northern Nevada, Funk says the bank's staff has focused on telling the Umpqua story to customers, an effort that's been helped by northern Nevada residents who formerly lived in other parts of the bank's service territory.
"We have a very good owner in Umpqua Bank. They bring a lot of stability, the ability for us to be back in the banking business," he says.
More challenging has been the efforts of Umpqua Bank to get those deposits back onto the streets of northern Nevada as interest-earning loans.
"It's very difficult to get people qualified," Funk says. Then, too, he says loan demand from northern Nevada business remains relatively weak.
"We'd like to put more loans out, without a doubt," Funk says.
At the same time, the bank's 45 employees in northern Nevada are working through the troubled loans that Umpqua acquired in the Nevada Security deal.
About $62 million in overdue loans were on the Nevada Security books when it failed. Umpqua and the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. have an agreement to share the losses the FDIC to cover 80 percent of the losses, Umpqua 20 percent over the next eight years on the total Nevada Security loan portfolio of $368 million.
"We are doing everything we can to work with our customers to get them through these difficult times," Funk says of the efforts to work out the loans.
Umpqua Bank also brought new human resources initiatives.
Its four locations in northern Nevada have launched "Connect," a program provides associates with paid time-off each year 40 hours for full-time and 20 hours for part-time to serve at youth-focused organizations, schools and community development programs.
Company-wide, about 77 percent of Umpqua employees participated in the program last year, devoting more than 36,000 hours to work at nonprofits and schools.
