One of Tennessee's largest banks is expanding, but not in its home state.
Pinnacle Financial Partners announced recently that it is expanding its Freddie Mac Small Balance Loan business with a new hire and a new office in Dallas, but maybe not for the reasons you would expect.
It’s been well documented that Dallas is one of the best performing multifamily markets in the U.S., especially in terms of the continued steady absorption of its massive supply growth.
But that is not why Pinnacle has chosen to expand into the Dallas market. Instead, the bank chose Dallas because of Jim Going, who will lead the new firm's new Dallas office.
Joe Bass, communications strategist at Pinnacle, said the Dallas expansion has little to do with local market conditions and everything to do with pursuing talent, the firm’s primary growth strategy.
“The location really doesn’t have a lot to do with the overall strategy for it…our leading growth strategy is through hiring financial advisors. We go after the best talent in the marketplaces where we do business and really count on them to drive growth organically,” Bass said.
One of the five original servicers in the SBL space, Going has over 25 years of experience in commercial real estate banking and specializes in multifamily lending, and in Pinnacle’s eye, he was the one to take its SBL business to the next level. Pinnacle hired Going as senior vice president and financial advisor, commercial real estate, in January.
“When it came to SBL, because working with Freddie Mac authorized us to do business all over the country, we really weren’t bound by geography…Jim Going is one of the best in the business, so we wanted to hire him and we did. We asked him where he wanted to work, and he said, ‘I’m from Dallas. Dallas has a deep pool of talent…and it’s really a good place to do business nationwide,’” Bass added.
Going told HousingWire he chose Dallas for two reasons: human capital and central location.
“The strategy for Dallas is to build upon the platform that we had in place based in Memphis (the Magna Bank acquisition in 2015), [and] to support originations nationally from the human capital pool that’s in Dallas…you’ve got individuals here that are experienced multifamily agency underwriters, originators, processors, closers and we’re in the Central time zone, so we can serve both coasts very quickly,” Going said.
Moving forward, Going is looking to hire eight to 12 people to fill various positions within his branch with the goal of doubling SBL output in 2019.
Going said he is in the process of interviewing candidates for these positions and expects to have about nine people hired in the Dallas branch by the end of 2019, though there is room for more hires around the nation for roles that are not geographically dependent.
“We like the SBL product; it’s a fee generation product for us, and we’re excited about expanding our platform,” Going said. “We want to try to double our production in 2019 and then continue on a pretty strong growth pattern for the subsequent years to come.”
