Flickr user yomanimus
Coastal Banking Company announced Tuesday that it will be closing its Lowcountry National Bank office on Hilton Head Island and moving all member accounts to its Port Royal branch on Ribaut Road.
"We made the decision to consolidate our Moss Creek (Hilton Head) branch due to the high cost of operating in that particular location," Michael G. Sanchez, chief executive officer, said in a statement on the company's website. "Over the past several years the area has become overbanked, and the competition has put pressure on banks to pay well above the market rate for deposits. As a result, our cost of funds at the Moss Creek branch has become unacceptably high compared to our other branches and is an impediment to our long-term strategy of growing core earnings."
That Sanchez and Coastal Banking Company termed the region "overbanked" is extremely interesting.
The press release, you can read it here, doesn't say why the company decided to consolidate within the Port Royal branch and not vice-versa, though I'm sure the decision was based on the fact that the Ribaut Road branch is no more than a couple of years old.
The company did state that employees at the Hilton Head branch will be offered positions in Port Royal or elsewhere in the company if they're available.
