Business & Tech

Belmont's Billion Dollar Bank: Savings Bank Reaches Milestone

Expansion in branches and rapid growth in lending push Leonard Street bank into 10 figures.

A decade ago, Belmont Savings Bank was your modest suburban bank owned by its depositors making money on home mortgages and CDs

Ten years later, the once sleepy bank has branched out, muscled up its entire loan portfolio and has doubled in size to where last month the Belmont Center-based institution hit the billion dollar mark in assets. 

The state-chartered savings bank – which trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol BLMT – headquartered on Leonard Street reported the milestone yesterday, Thursday, Oct. 24 as it released third quarter financials where bank management reported a good three months and 2013.

Since the beginning of the year, the bank increased assets by $185 million, an impressive 22 percent, to reach exactly $1 billion with deposits of $727 million, an increase of $119.1 million or 19.6 percent.

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The bank is trading near its highs of the past year of $14.15 as of Friday, Oct. 25.

"During the third quarter we experienced continued growth in loans, core deposits and earnings. The market is quite receptive to knowledgeable, customer centric community bankers. Credit quality is good, as our local economy continues to improve and we are very proud to have crossed the $1 billion asset mark," said Robert Mahoney, Belmont Savings president and CEO, who is the architect of the bank's growth in loan activity and branch expansion. 

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The bank's holding company – BSB Bancorp, Inc. – reported a reported net income of $538,000 ending Sept. 30, compared to net income of $183,000, over the same period last year. For the first nine months of 2013, BSB reported net income of $1.3 million versus $916,000 in 2012.

And a lot of that money came from loans with net loan growth, excluding loans held for sale, growing $141.2 million in the past nine months across the category: Commercial real estate, ($44.2 million), residential mortgage ($70.5 million), home equity ($13.3 million) and indirect auto loans ($12 million).


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