PacWest Bancorp has offloaded Civic Financial Services, its property lending division, to real estate loan originator Roc360, the acquirer announced Tuesday.
The sum of the transaction was not disclosed. The sale did not include previously originated loans and loan servicing operations, according to the Roc360 press release.
The Civic Financial sale comes a day after PacWest sold a roughly $2.6 billion portfolio of construction loans to real estate investment firm Kennedy-Wilson.
Since March, PacWest and other regional lenders have suffered a crisis of confidence, as stock prices plummeted in the wake of the failures of Signature and Silicon Valley Bank. Some have been looking for ways to bolster liquidity.
PacWest, however, had been right-sizing at Civic Financial even before March. The bank cut 200 Civic Financial jobs in February, adding that it was also “reducing the number of loan products offered, reducing loan growth compared to 2022 levels, and transferring the management of most Civic functions to company executives.” The move, at the time, was on-trend: Some of the largest mortgage lenders, such as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase had been stepping back from that sector over the previous year.
A spokesperson for PacWest did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The Kennedy-Wilson deal is “consistent with [PacWest’s] previously announced strategy ... to pursue strategic assets sales and focus on our core community banking business,” the bank said.
Roc360 plans to keep the Civic Financial name, adding it to a portfolio of real estate brands that includes Roc Capital and Finance of America Commercial.
"In the face of market difficulties, we continue to expand and develop more products and services for real estate investors,” Roc360 CEO Arvind Raghunathan said Tuesday. “We believe that America's housing stock is severely undersupplied, with more than 50% of homes in deferred maintenance ... We will continue to prudently expand and invest for long-term solutions to these structural problems.”
PacWest acquired Civic Financial from real estate investor Wedgewood in 2021 as a way to “grow in the private lending space,” the bank’s then-CEO, Matt Wagner, said at the time.
Civic Financial, which lends to landlords and investors looking to flip and resell homes, has funded more than $9.4 billion through its borrower-direct, broker and correspondent channels since 2014, according to Tuesday’s release.
