Wells Fargo tops TD bank

By Dick Hughes  

OCTOBER 30, 2011 10:30 a.m. (0)

Wells Fargo, successor to Wachovia, has replaced TD Bank, successor to Carolina First, as the largest bank in Greenville by deposits, as TD rid itself of costly out-of-market deposits and Wells aggressively sought new depositors.

By purging $2 billion in brokered deposits, TD fell from first in market share in its home county to fourth behind Wells Fargo, Bank of America and BB&T.  It is the first time since 2004 that Carolina First has not led in deposits.

According to FDIC’s summary of deposits and market share released last week, Wells Fargo picked up an additional $1.9 billion in deposits from July 2010 to June 30 of this year.

Brian Rogers, who is senior vice president for the Upstate as he was for Wachovia, attributed Wells’ success to attracting new depositors from other institutions, holding existing customers and expanding its deposit base with “a lot of different products.”

Richard Redden, South Carolina president for Wells, who also held the position with Wachovia, has said Wells used the nearly three years between agreeing to acquire Wachovia and the conversion last month  to add 500 bankers and new Wells products  while other banks were retrenching.

“I wish I could say it came from my pocket, but I can’t,” Rogers said about the nearly $2 billion gain in deposits in the past year.

Wells had $3.5 billion in deposits in Greenville as of June 30, giving it a 31 percent share of the Greenville market from just 15 percent a year ago and an overwhelming lead over Bank of America’s $1.3 billion and 12 percent of the market.  BB&T is ranked third with $1.2 billion and 11 percent.

Both BOA and BB&T had small gains in Greenville, BOA from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion and BB&T from $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion.

In Spartanburg, Bank of America’s deposit total dropped $483 million to $825 million but remained dominant, though at 19.15 percent of the market as opposed to 27 percent a year ago.  SunTrust gained ground to nearly 14 percent market share.  BB&T jumped ahead of Wells Fargo as No. 3.

As had Wachovia, Wells Fargo remains the largest bank in deposits statewide with 17.7 percent market share, followed by Bank of America at 13.3 percent, BB&T at 9.8 percent, First Citizens at 9 percent and TD at 4.9 percent.

Greenville is the richest and most competitive banking market in the state with 34 banks with 163 branches holding $10.8 deposits, just shy of 16 percent of the state market.  The Columbia market of Richland County is second, Charleston third, Horry fourth and Spartanburg  fifth.  That ranking has been consistent for more than a decade.

The most dramatic change in the landscape over the last year came in Greenville County, where TD had $780 million in deposits, down from $2.3 billion a year ago, and went from market share of  22.3 to 7.2 percent.

It was a change Rob Hoak, TD’s president for South Carolina and Wilmington, N.C., said was 100 percent related to the brokered certificates of deposit that TD paid off in late 2010 and early 2011.

He said it is a sign of strength that TD is able to rid itself of the brokered funding of Carolina First, which went into a decline during the recession from 2008 until sale to TD at a fire-sale price in 2010.

“Because TD is a triple A rated bank, we don’t need to fund ourselves that way with higher yielding brokered CDs,” he said. “We elected to let those brokered CDs runoff as they matured.

“The major point is they were not South Carolina customer deposits. They were a mechanism Carolina First used to fund itself.”

At a peak in 2008, he said, Carolina Bank had $2.7 billion in brokered deposits and today  has “very, very few. We’ve run through most of it.”

Had TD kept the $2 billion by renewing those CDs, he said, TD would show about $500 million in deposit growth in Greenville.  The hit does not show in Carolina First’s other markets because the brokered deposits were all placed at headquarters in Greenville.   TD, in the main, held its own in other major state markets.

Hoak, who joined TD after the sale, said the drop in Greenville’s deposit total “had nothing to do at all” with the ownership change and that TD was pleased with growth before and after conversion in June.

He said TD’s commercial loan pipelines are “higher than they have ever been” and that we are “really happy with how our retail banking is going.”

For the second consecutive year, TD is the No. 1 producer of Small Business Administration loans in South Carolina, and the bank expects to repeat that record in the 2012 SBA fiscal year, Hoak said.