METBANK REPORTS STRONG GROWTH IN 2005

NEW YORK – “Metropolitan National Bank of New York [Metbank] had strong earnings, good return on equity and a 30% increase in assets in 2005,” according to Mark R. DeFazio, president and CEO.

The bank, which focuses on commercial real estate and middle market lending and which opened its first branch on Park Avenue in 2004 after six years of operations, had assets at year end of approximately $375 million compared with $289 million at the end of 2004.

DeFazio also announced that Metbank will open two additional branches in the first half of 2006. One will be located at 16 West 46th Street at Fifth Avenue and the other will be at 1359 Broadway at 38th Street. “And, our goal is to enter into lease negotiations for two additional branches in the third and fourth quarters of ’06. These would open for business in 2007,” he said.

Metbank had a successful capital raise in 2005, DeFazio reported, “and we issued our first placement of debt securities through Bear Stearns — $10 million in Trust Preferred Securities. The fact that we qualified for the Trust Preferred placement is important because it proves the quality of our financial position.”

Metbank is perhaps the only institution of its kind with a focus on the check cashing business. Its CashZone subsidiary operates 15 Financial Service Centers in New York City. In 2005 the bank became the first in the Northeast to issue Visa Debit Card through CashZone to check cashing clients. “Unlike unbranded debit cards issued by other check cashers that work with a PIN only, CashZone’s Visa Debit Card allows for Internet and signature-based transactions at restaurants, for example,” DeFazio pointed out.

The new card is being rolled out at all of CashZone’s locations, which serve nearly 100,000 unique check cashing clients each year.

The card has been described as a “virtual” checking account and “has the potential of demonstrating to regulators, other banks and the marketplace that you can provide mainstream banking services to what has been labeled the un-banked population. They are un-banked for one reason and one reason only: because no one has chosen to bank them until now,” DeFazio said.

Metbank entered the one-to-four family mortgage loan business in August 2004 when it created its Metbank Mortgage division and reported that in 2005 the division closed $123 million in residential mortgage loans. In the 18 months since the unit was established it has seen a 15% per month growth in the pace of loan applications.

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