Our Company
At Coastal States Bank (CSB), our community bank is the foundation of COSO. Through CSB, we focus on commercial and retail clients who do business or reside in our local markets in which our 11 branches are located. Today, our community bank operates in the vibrant markets of the Lowcountry of South Carolina and the nearby Savannah, Georgia, as well as Atlanta, Georgia – the largest MSA by population in the southeast region of the U.S.
Community banking has been a core competency of CSB since our inception in 2004, providing granular commercial and small business lending opportunities, while driving attractively priced core deposit funding to support growth in our four additional specialty lines of business: Senior Housing Lending, Marine Lending, Government Guaranteed Lending, and Mortgage Banker Finance.
Our specialty lines of business serve our clients across the Southeast and the U.S. We have grown these businesses over many years through the hiring of highly experienced relationship managers and expert leaders, and with a focus on scalability, profitability, and strong credit quality. Utilizing conservative underwriting methodologies and careful risk selection to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns, these lines of business help to drive our earnings results and our capacity to grow earnings through efficient asset generation, while serving to diversify our balance sheet from both product and geographic perspectives.
Our Three Growth Strategies
Due to industry-wide profitability pressures such as compressing net interest margins and rising operating costs, we believe the capacity to deliver robust balance sheet growth is a necessary attribute of a successful bank that produces attractive shareholder returns and performance metrics, while effectively managing risk. Our three growth strategies effectively serve to drive our balance sheet growth and earnings results.
- Organic Growth: This strategy stems from our ability to attract, expand and acquire client relationships and core deposit balances sourced through our local branch system, commercial loan balances sourced through our commercial bankers and de novo branching in current and new markets.
- Acquisitive Growth: We supplement our organic growth with carefully selected and financially disciplined acquisitions of other community banks, a strategy our executive team has successfully implemented at CSB and prior companies. Like our organic growth strategy, our M&A strategy is focused on our existing markets, as well as potential new metro markets on an opportunistic basis.
- Business Line Growth: This strategy refers to both our scalable and profitable generation of assets and revenue through our four specialty lines of business outside of our community banking footprint, as well as our proven ability to establish new specialty lines of business over time.
Our Competitive Advantage
Financially Focused
We believe connections exist between the production of returns on average assets and average tangible common equity and our four focal financial metrics: (1) net interest margin, (2) credit metrics, (3) balance sheet and income statement growth, and (4) careful management of expenses as evidenced by our efficiency ratio. We believe the achievement of successful results in each component is critical to both protecting the value of our bank, particularly during times of stress, and driving growth in shareholder value.
Non-Financial Value Drivers
- Management: We believe our management team’s long tenure of working together in our markets provides a strong familiarity with each other and the markets we serve. Our management team is highly engaged in business development and community service initiatives, and they have proven to be proficient in recruiting talented bankers to join CSB.
- Markets: Our markets are among the strongest in the country when it comes to the attributes that drive success in banking: economic vibrancy and diversification, size of the addressable market for loan and core deposit growth, demographic strength and expected future demographic expansion, and a business-friendly climate.
- Culture and Differentiated Brand: At CSB, we believe our Company builds strength through relationships. We exist to build meaningful relationships with our team members, our clients, and our communities through our five core values: Character, Commitment, Trust, Service and Community.
- Scarcity Value: In the State of South Carolina, CSB is the third largest headquartered bank by total assets. We remain one of only 16 banks with total assets between $1.5 billion and $5 billion headquartered in South Carolina and Georgia. We compete effectively with our smaller competitors with lower levels of lending capacity and less robust product offerings, as well as our larger competitors with less capacity to deliver customized and attentive client experiences.
- Scalability: Since our Recapitalization in 2017 we have built our Company to achieve scalability. We have invested in hiring long-tenured executive officers and business producers, as well as technology providing us with the capacity to support our growth strategies and improve overall client experience.
- Diversification: The diversification of our balance sheet, our revenue streams, and our geographies represent one of the most important tenets of our approach to risk management. The makeup of our loans held for investment include various types of consumer and business loans – none representing greater than 24.0% of our gross loan portfolio as of March 31, 2025.