New Horizon Bank is expanding with its first location in Richmond and an office in Hampton Roads.
One of the region’s smaller banks is on the move as it looks to expand beyond the confines of its hometown of Powhatan.
New Horizon Bank, a $128 million bank headquartered on Anderson Highway, has signed on to open a new loan office at 2800 Patterson Ave. for its first-ever location in the city of Richmond.
Further afield, the bank also recently expanded its operations into Norfolk, where it hired a seasoned banker to open its first office in the Hampton Roads region and its first outside of the Richmond area.
Those two moves come less than a year into the tenure of CEO Will Groves, who took the helm at New Horizon at the beginning of 2024.
Groves said the two new lending offices are spurred by the 14-year-old bank’s recent addition of new talent to allow it to continue to grow its commercial banking ranks.
“My vision is, let’s get really good at commercial banking,” Groves said. “We are focused on building out old-school banking and merging that with new technology that’s out there today. To do that, we’re focused on getting the right people.”
In the Richmond region it recently hired commercial bankers Ron Simms, previously of Chesapeake Bank, and Sarah Mayfield, previously with TowneBank.
In Norfolk it hired Terri Ruby, who was most recently with Blue Ridge Bank as its Hampton Roads regional president.
For the Patterson Avenue office, Groves said the bank signed a lease last week to take over part of the first floor of the wedge-shaped building in the Devil’s Triangle neighborhood. Groves said the office will open in January.
The bank will share the building with One South Commercial. Several One South agents and investor Dave McCormack of Waukeshaw Development recently bought the building for $2.6 million.
“We wanted to be in Richmond. That was strategic for us. And we just fell in love with that building,” Groves said of the lease.
The bank expects two of its commercial bankers to be based in the Devil’s Triangle space, and Groves said he’ll use the office often as well. The plan is to eventually have seven to 10 employees. Groves said the building won’t serve as a full-service branch.
Groves said the Norfolk office will have a team of three and the bank is bullish on growth in that area.
“I thought, let’s lean into Norfolk, it’s a great market,” Groves said, adding that a full branch could be a possibility there.
Groves joined New Horizon in summer 2023 as chief banking officer. He stepped into the CEO role when predecessor Doug Mitchell retired.
Mitchell, who had been the CEO for around four years, was brought in when New Horizon was taken over by CSBH LLC, a holding company created by Mitchell and investor Uriel Cohen out of New York.
They infused the small bank with $5 million in fresh capital and had a plan to grow it mainly through online banking. New Horizon was founded in 2009 as a $10 million bank.
While Mitchell has moved on, Cohen, remains an investor and board member.
Groves started his career as a bank examiner with the FDIC. He then moved to the industry side, working for County First Bank in Maryland and Community Bank of the Chesapeake. He came to the Richmond region to work for Locus Bank, previously known as Virginia Community Capital, before joining New Horizon last year.
He said the bank’s current trajectory is a new sort of strategy for the region’s smallest bank.
“It’s something different. I framed 2024 as a building year for us, to set ourselves up for growth going into 2025 strong,” he said.
Groves said New Horizon is targeting growth-oriented commercial customers that want to keep their deposits in the bank while taking out loans.
New Horizon reported a loss of $988,000 through the first half of the year, according to its most recent FDIC reports.