BankUnited rethinks lending strategy, shifts away from South Florida
By Nina Lincoff
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 27, 2015

Miami Lakes-based BankUnited released its second quarter earnings Thursday, and in a conference call with investors, Chairman, President and CEO John Kanas revealed that the largest South Florida-based bank is backing away from South Florida lending.

"We have backed away a little bit particularly in the South Florida, East Coast area of Miami from some of the larger credits as they've come back for renewal and there's more pricing competition and more term competition,” Kanas said. "We backed out of a couple of deals that we thought were too thin for us and let them go.”

The Miami area is extremely competitive in terms of banking, finance and lending, following a quick bounce back from the 2008 financial crisis. As other areas in the Sunshine State begin to catch up and as BankUnited adds lending teams in regions like Tampa and Orlando - including the addition of Jason Russek and Jason Costello for a business banking team in Tampa- the bank has begun to re-balance its lending focus. Part of the reason is that it's easier to originate certain types of loans in other parts of Florida than it is in Miami.

"What we've done is, as economic improvement makes its way across the state, we started adding teams of people in different markets and are finding that some of those markets offer as good an opportunity, if not better, than what we're currently seeing in Miami-Dade,” Kanas said. "Although Miami-Dade … it's the New York City of Florida, but it's an extremely competitive market."

BankUnited's lending pipeline overall is expected to increase in the third quarter, driven by new staff the bank brought on outside of South Florida. The bank began to spread out its loan origination machine out across this state earlier this year, focusing on other regions.

" We're finding that we're getting a very, very strong early indication from areas like Tampa and Orlando and Jacksonville - and a lot of that, yes, is attributable to the new folks that we brought on,” Kanas said.