PDLB - Ponce Bank Exceeds ECIP Targets and Qualifies for 0.5% Preferred Stock Dividend Rate | Benzinga
NEW YORK, June 20, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ponce Financial Group, Inc., (the "Company") (NASDAQ:PDLB), the holding company for Ponce Bank (the "Bank"), today reported that the Bank exceeded the dividend rate reduction threshold for Qualified Lending targets designated by the U.S. Treasury Department pursuant to the Emergency Capital Investment Program ("ECIP"). The Bank's "qualified lending" as measured pursuant to ECIP totaled $1.162 billion from June 8, 2023 through March 31, 2024. This critical milestone of the ECIP program reduces the dividend obligation on Ponce Financial Group's $225.0 million Senior Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock payable to the U.S. Treasury Department from 2.0% to 0.50% for the quarterly dividends payable through June 2025, resulting in a one-year annualized savings of $3.375 million.
The Bank achieved this milestone during the first official reporting period of the program with $717.73 million in Qualified Lending and of which $445.08 million were also Deep Impact Lending. Under ECIP, Deep Impact Lending is given double credit, bringing the amount to $890.15 million, and total "qualified lending" as measured pursuant to the ECIP to $1.162 billion. The ECIP program was created to encourage low- and moderate-income community financial institutions to augment their efforts to support the small businesses and consumers in their communities that often struggle to find support from larger institutions.
The Bank's President and Chief Executive Officer Carlos P. Naudon noted, "Despite a myriad of systemic pressures, our nation's community banks, particularly those designated CDFI and MDI, continue to deliver impact far above their weight. We are engines of economic equity operating in an environment often skewed against it. We're seeing more and more recognition of this fact, and we hope that the U.S. Government, our regulators, shareholders, and especially depositors, continue to recognize the positive impact their support has on systemically critical institutions like Ponce ...