Seeking to capitalize on the continuing disruption and red-hot growth, Veritex Holdings added three senior lenders in Houston.
William Ray will serve as executive vice president and managing director middle-market banking, Brent Reed will serve as executive vice president for commercial real estate and Will Richardson executive vice president for private banking. All three joined the $10.5 billion-asset Veritex from Bank of Houston, where they held similar senior-level positions.
Veritex, the Dallas-based holding company for Veritex Community Bank, has grown assets by more than $1.6 billion since the end of 2020. A commitment to hiring “top-notch talent” has been a major driver behind that expansion, Chairman and CEO Malcolm Holland said Wednesday on a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s first-quarter earnings.
“These three seasoned lenders we hired and the teams they will assemble make a major statement to the Houston market that Veritex is committed and well-positioned to continue our organic growth [there],” Holland said.
All three are expected to be “gangbuster producers,” Holland added.
Veritex, which announced the new hires Tuesday, filled 20 new roles during the first quarter, according to Holland.
“We continue to think the VBTX story is highly unique in the bank space for its success in adding revenue-generating talent over the past year,” Brett Rabatin, who covers Veritex for Hovde Group, wrote Wednesday in a research note. “The growth of the franchise continues to be stronger than most of the industry and should continue to result in better loan growth, revenue, and earnings-per-share trends than peer banks.”
Despite losing Ray, Reed and Richardson, Bank of Houston has been similarly aggressive on the hiring front. The company recently hired 16 community bankers, including veteran Houston lender David Webster, who’ll serve as market president for the Galleria neighborhood, Chairman and CEO James Stein said Wednesday.
Bank of Houston also added a veteran foreign national mortgage lending team. “We believe with the recent acquisitions, foreign national mortgage lending is an underserved segment and we intend to expand that business line,” Stein said.
According to the Census Bureau, the Houston region added more than 69,000 people between July 2020 and July 2021, pushing its total population past 7.2 million. The region’s population is expected to grow by 8% between 2021 and 2026.
That growth is attracting a lot of investment from banks.
PNC Financial Services Group
Cullen/Frost Bankers in San Antonio
“Disruption in the market is good for community banks like Bank of Houston,” Stein said. “We have experienced tremendous growth in these past two years and look to continue to expand our market share as we are very bullish on Houston and the Greater Houston” metropolitan statistical area.
Veritex reported Wednesday that its first-quarter net income rose 5% year over year to $33.47 million.
