HarborOne Bank is expanding its footprint into Rhode Island with the opening of a new commercial loan office in downtown Providence.
The office, which is to be located on Westminster Street in Providence’s financial district, is the bank’s first since its conversion to a bank charter in 2013. That news also comes on the heels of the bank’s recent announcement that it would acquire Merrimack Mortgage Co. Inc. in Manchester, N.H.
James W. Blake, HarborOne’s president and CEO, said the bank had already been lending to companies in Rhode Island when it made the decision to open up shop there.
“It was very good business in terms of the credits we were looking at, so as we continued to grow our portfolio there, our commercial lenders were commuting back and forth from our headquarters in Brockton,” he said. “As we grew the portfolio, we decided it was time to take some office space and house three of our lenders in Providence.”
HarborOne Vice Presidents Mathew Isana and George Sadler will lead that office’s commercial lending efforts.
Isana has worked for HarborOne as a commercial lending officer since 2012 and has almost 30 years of commercial lending experience, most recently at Rockland Trust and the former Sovereign Bank. He is also a native of Rhode Island and a graduate of Providence College.
Sadler, a commercial real estate lending officer, also has ties to the region. He has previously worked in Rhode Island for both RBS Citizens Financial Group and Fleet National Bank.
Blake said he hopes to grow the bank’s commercial loan portfolio to around 35 percent of its assets over the next several years (today commercial loans make up about 12 percent of its assets), and while Boston is a little bit closer to HarborOne’s Brockton headquarters, Providence is an attractive market in its own right.
“You’re certainly seeing a lot of national lenders gravitating to the Boston market, but it isn’t quite as competitive in Providence as it is in Boston and that’s beneficial, too,” he told Banker & Tradesman. “You’re starting to see some growth in the Rhode Island market, and the companies we’re looking at have strong balance sheets and are showing strong results.”
