Over the last few months, a new bank in town has been settling into its loan production office off Greenfield Avenue.
 
Wilmington is the first North Carolina location of Paragon National Bank, based in Memphis, Tennessee, with a Small Business Capital Group in Atlanta. Locally, Brent Boswell is the vice president of commercial lending. He leads a team of seven, all formerly with Select Bank in the Wilmington market.
 
Dunn, North Carolina-based Select Bank was acquired by First Bank last year.
 
“Paragon is looking to get into the growth markets in North Carolina,” Boswell said Wednesday. “They did research on Wilmington and had a connection here with Gina DeCicco, who formerly was the director of mortgage lending at Select Bank. They realized she had a wonderful team of commercial lenders and commercial support; that escalated into offers to open a location. Paragon wants to connect the dots geographically between Memphis and Wilmington.”
 
Although Paragon’s Wilmington location has operated as a commercial and mortgage loan processing office since it opened in November, the bank has secured a branch location and will open that full-service office sometime in the late spring, Boswell said. Like other Paragon branches, it will receive underwriting and servicing support for its SBA 7(a) and 504 loans from Paragon’s Atlanta-based group, which operates on a national basis.
 
Boswell said that recent bank consolidations have left a need for community banks.
 
“There’s a void for that $2 billion-$3 billion bank,” he said. “There’s plenty for us out there.