2008 Interview with: First Sound Bank (Seattle WA) (FSWA-OTC: BB), Chairman and CEO, Donald L. Hirtzel, President and COO, Steven M. Shaughnessy - featuring: their customized banking for small- to medium-sized businesses, organizations, not-for-profits and professionals in the Puget Sound region.

First Sound Bank (Seattle WA) (FSWA-OTC: BB)

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After Raising $20 Million During Their IPO And Another $11 Million Afterwards, Today First Sound Bank Is Well Capitalized And Well Positioned For Future Growth With A Nice Asset Mix



Financial
Commercial Banks
(FSWA-OTC: BB)

First Sound Bank (Seattle WA)

925 Fourth Ave., Suite 2350
Seattle, WA 98104
Phone: 206-515-2004



Donald L. Hirtzel
Chairman and CEO



Steven M. Shaughnessy
President and COO

Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
Published – September 5, 2008

Executive Bios:
Donald L. Hirtzel   Director Since 2004
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Hirtzel has been involved in the banking industry for 40 years with the past 27 in the greater Seattle-Eastside markets. He resigned as Senior Vice President and Division Manager of Business and Professional Banking from Pacific Northwest Bank (Wells Fargo) to pursue the formation of First Sound Bank. At Pacific Northwest Bank Mr. Hirtzel developed a new King County Commercial Banking Team in addition to managing the activities of five other Business Centers throughout Washington. Prior experience included serving as Executive Vice President in charge of production for Tacoma-based Columbia Bank and various other Senior Vice President positions with responsibilities in retail, business and corporate banking for Rainier National Bank, Security Pacific Bank, West One Bank and U S Bank. Mr. Hirtzel was recognized in 1984 as Area Executive of the Year by Rainier National Bank, in 1991 by Security Pacific Bank as Business Banking Center Leader of the Year, in 1992 by West One Bank as Banker of the Year, and in 1998 awarded the U S Bank Leadership Award. Mr. Hirtzel currently serves on the Board of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, a national organization based in Arlington, VA. And is also Board member of the local Better Business Bureau of Western Washington, Oregon and Alaska where he has served for 7 years and was their former Board Chair. Mr. Hirtzel has served on a variety of community boards over the years including the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce, Kirkland Chamber of Commerce, Bellevue Community College Foundation (where he served as Treasurer), Youth Eastside Services and Junior Achievement. Mr. Hirtzel is a graduate of the University of South Dakota and a graduate of the Colorado Graduate School of Banking at the University of Colorado.

Steven M. Shaughnessy   Director Since 2004
President and Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Shaughnessy has 28 years of experience in the Seattle banking and finance market encompassing a wide range of positions in traditional banking as well as asset-based finance. In 1990 he helped form CAPCO Financial, for which he served as President until the company was sold to Greater Bay Bancorp of Palo Alto, Ca. in 2001. CAPCO designed and delivered secured finance products targeting high risk or non-conforming small and medium-sized business borrowers in Washington and Oregon. Prior to forming CAPCO, Mr. Shaughnessy was a Vice President with First Interstate Bank of Washington and Rainier National Bank with various positions in retail branch management, internal bank auditing, commercial lending and business development. He is a graduate of the University of Washington with a BA degree in Finance and Accounting

Company Profile:

Seattle-based First Sound Bank offers customized banking for small- to medium-sized businesses, organizations, not-for-profits and professionals in the Puget Sound region. Founded by a team of veteran local banking executives, it is committed to delivering personalized service, convenient access and competitive rates to support the needs of the business community. The bank offers online banking at plus an expansive banking network in the western U.S., as well as ATM banking throughout the country and abroad. On March 1, 2008, First Sound Bank purchased a majority of the assets of Puget Sound Leasing Company, Inc. -- a small-ticket, business-to-business leasing company with a prior 23-year history -- and established Puget Sound Leasing as a division of First Sound Bank.

CEOCFO: Mr. Hirtzel, what has changed for First Sound since we spoke last year?

Mr. Hirtzel: “The big change for us in the last twelve months has been the asset acquisition of Puget Sound Leasing. It is a company we have known for a long time and they have been in this market for over 23 years. Puget Sound Leasing is a small ticket, privately held leasing company that does business primarily in the Pacific Northwest but also in states throughout the country. On March 1^st we closed that transaction so now they are operating as a division of First Sound Bank. Their sixty-four employees, including the original principals, Lou and Dick Secord, are now employees of the bank. Lou Secord is also a member of the Board of Directors as an inside member. We are very excited about the transaction; that took about a year to negotiate and close. They do something over $70 million a year in lease transactions with the average lease being less than $27,000. It is business to business leasing in a market that fits our niche very well. They will close about 250 new leases per month and service a portfolio in excess of $190 million. Therefore, as you can see, this was a significant transaction for us.”

CEOCFO: With creditworthiness such a concern today, how do you insure the quality of the leases?

Mr. Hirtzel: “Regarding the credit quality, both the principals, Lou and Dick Secord had prior banking experience before forming their own leasing company and, specifically, in credit underwriting. They are proven underwriters. Many of the leases are with customers they have had business with in the past. The credit quality is generally sound; we are seeing some deterioration in outlying markets, but it is not anything significant. Most of the leases are in Washington, Oregon and Idaho and those markets are still operating pretty soundly.”

CEOCFO: Do you anticipate that the economic conditions in your area will continue favorably?

Mr. Shaughnessy: “To be honest our clients appear to be doing very well, in spite of the media coverage of the weakening economic conditions around the nation. Unlike the typical community bank our client base, comprised mainly of commercial business accounts, has not been adversely effected by the troubles of the residential real estate market downturn.”

Mr. Hirtzel: “Keep in mind, we are a primarily a commercial and industrial bank so the mix of our earning assets is mostly C&I. Over sixty percent is C&I, and something less than forty percent real estate. That is a much different mix than what you see in a lot of the smaller community banks in this market or even nationally for that matter.”

CEOCFO: Is it easier to attract new business these days because of the concern in the industry or does it make it harder for you?

Mr. Shaughnessy: “The level of new business that we attract has little or nothing to do with the market or industry concern. We attract commercial accounts with annual revenue between $1 and $30 million by essentially customized banking solutions that better suit their individual business banking needs. We have found that companies in this market segment, who are often treated as a faceless mass market by the large banks, welcome the enhancements that we bring to their attention.”

CEOCFO: How do you actively pursue new business?

Mr. Hirtzel: “We actively pursue business from the concept of direct referrals from existing clients, directors, and shareholders. The rest is purely cold calling on companies that are representative of the King, Pierce, and Snohomish County marketplace that we target with annual revenues greater than $1 million, less than $30 million. We introduce ourselves and explain our differences and our benefits and simply spend the time to build the relationships to make people comfortable so when there is a disruption in their current banking relationship, we are the first on their list to call.”

CEOCFO: Looking at your website, I see ‘innovative business banking your way’; would you give us a couple of examples of what is innovative, and what might people find that they won’t get elsewhere?

Mr. Shaughnessy: “Innovative business banking your way is another way of saying that we offer customized solutions. We know that all businesses must have a bank but we find that rarely have they reexamined their banking as their business has grown over time. By targeting the niche that the large banks view as “mass market” we are exposing our clients to the full array of what modern banking has to offer and regularly find that our clients can greatly improve their banking efficiency and value through our consultative solutions.”

Mr. Hirtzel: “When we call on a business customer we offer them a financial advantage to bank here. While we are proud of the service we offer our customers it is not unique to say we offer great service as all businesses strive to make that claim. However, if someone is going to move here from another bank we offer, in addition to great service, a distinct financial advantage to move and we can still do it and be a very successful bank. Keep in mind to that we don’t have any branches, we don’t have a Main Street presence; we are on the 23^rd floor of an office building in downtown Seattle. Everything we do in attracting new clients is the result of our bankers convincing the customer that this is a better place to bank than where they are today.”

CEOCFO: Are people a bit put off initially because you do not have a physical branch to look at?
Mr. Hirtzel: “No, believe it or not, not at all. We see branch banking as something that is just overhead and expense. Once we can talk to the customer and tell them what our method of delivery is, they buy into it fairly quickly. However, we also recognize the “selling process” is a process that may take months or even years. We just celebrated our fourth year anniversary so we are going into our fifth year with over $270 million in total assets and you saw our quarter end numbers. We are doing that without a retail presence.”

Mr. Shaughnessy: “Lynn, you asked earlier “what defines innovation”. Because we don’t have a fixed retail network, we have truly the opportunity to customize the banking facilities that any one of our business customers demands. For example, an electrical contractor banking at Bank of America came to us inquiring about a “sweep account” that would allow them to earn interest on their money and about something called “remote capture” that would eliminate the daily drive to the bank to make deposits. They had asked their current bank about these services and were simply told that they were too small to qualify for such services. In our model that was far from the conclusion. We not only built a sweep account for them, that paid interest on their excess funds, but we installed remote deposit capture scanning equipment that saved their bookkeeper a four-mile round trip to the branch to make deposits everyday. In the end, our customer saved the cost of the employee time to make daily bank deposits plus earned hard dollar interest on their excess funds which amounted to over $12,000 the following year. That is what we define as innovation.”

CEOCFO: That is substantial!

Mr. Shaughnessy: “It is substantial!”

CEOCFO: Are many of your customers taking advantage of the personal services as well or is that an area that needs to grow?

Mr. Hirtzel: “When we bank a company we also offer to bank the principals of the company and their employees and we have ways to do that. While retail banking is not our primary focus we are certainly capable of doing it. We cross-sell those services when we bring on a new business client. We are also attracting some significantly high net-worth individuals  in this market that are looking for alternatives to where they may be banking today and that has been quite successful. We don’t specifically have a private banking department per se, but we think of ourselves as all private bankers and we don’t need to have those departments that you would see in other much larger organizations. In addition, if our bankers are banking the business relationship, they are also capable in banking the personal relationships as well rather than have another bank officer involved.”

CEOCFO: Is there much competition from newer banks in your area or is it pretty stable at this point?

Mr. Hirtzel: “When we formed in 2004, we were the first bank that formed in about a year and a half. However, since we have opened there have been five or six other community banks that have followed our model and, in some instances, they have opened more traditional retail offices. When we first formed the bank, we raised $20 million in capital and were over subscribed in our offering. Four hundred investors put up an average of $50 thousand a piece, and the $20 million that we raised had never been raised before in the Pacific Northwest. Since we have done that, others have followed and others have raised $20 million as well. In the last year or so though, there have not been any new banks formed, with one exception. Typically, today if you are trying to raise equity to start a new bank or even get the application approved you would be hard-pressed to do so. We reached profitability in our seventeenth month and some of the banks that formed after us are still struggling to become profitable. Several of them are not expecting to be profitable for another twelve months or so which would probably take them 24-36 months from inception before they reach profitability. In addition, after we raised our initial $20 million we subsequently raised another $11 million, so today we are very well capitalized, very well positioned for future growth, and we are very proud of our asset mix as compared to a lot of the other banks in this market.”

CEOCFO: You stand out from the crowd!

Mr. Hirtzel: “Absolutely!”

CEOCFO: What is ahead two or three years down the line?

Mr. Shaughnessy: “Our primary focus is to complete the integration of the leasing company and then focus on growing the bank into its current level of capital.”

Mr. Hirtzel: “We would love to get to the point where we are able to reward our shareholders with our focus on profitability. We want growth but we don’t want growth for growth’s sake. In our strategic planning retreats with our Board and Executive management our focus continues to be on enhancing our profitability and rewarding our shareholders.”

CEOCFO: Building good will is simply good business at First Sound Bank!

Mr. Hirtzel: “There you go!”

CEOCFO: Is the investment community paying attention or are you still below the radar screen?

Mr. Hirtzel: “I think we are still below the radar screen. We have had two really good quarters, but we don’t think our stock has performed as well as we would like it to. We know it is a tough market and financial stocks are not doing very well anywhere, so we think it is going to take another few quarters before we get any notice. We have got to continue to prove ourselves over the long-term and the investment community has to be comfortable that the leasing acquisition was good and certainly the last two quarters would indicate that. We need some consistent increase in earnings and then, hopefully, we will gain more attention from the investment community.”

CEOCFO: Why should investors be looking at First Sound Bank?

Mr. Shaughnessy: “Simply put, I believe that our model is unique among community banks in our market and our performance to date has demonstrated a good return for investors. On a broader scale, the fact that our results are regularly in the top 25% of all de novo banks formed across the nation in 2004 gives further support to our model.”

CEOCFO: Final thoughts, what should people remember most about First Sound Bank?

Mr. Hirtzel: “In summary I think I would like to focus on the mix of our earning assets. Steve touched on this, but we are primarily a C&I bank, we do real estate lending as well but real estate credit is not our primary objective. Our primary objective is to help small to medium sized businesses use and invest their deposits more effectively and to provide credit for working capital, asset acquisition and growth. That piece of the market continues to look pretty strong in the Pacific Northwest. If you compare us to the other banks in this market, we are unique in that regard. Therefore, it is our focus on deposit gathering, the mix of our earning assets and our focus on business banking that makes us unique.”

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“Keep in mind, we are a primarily a commercial and industrial bank so the mix of our earning assets is mostly C&I. Over sixty percent is C&I, and something less than forty percent real estate. That is a much different mix than what you see in a lot of the smaller community banks in this market or even nationally for that matter.” - Donald L. Hirtzel

“You asked earlier “what defines innovation”. Because we don’t have a fixed retail network, we have truly the opportunity to customize the banking facilities that any one of our business customers demands.” - Steven M. Shaughnessy