SunTrust Commercial Real Estate to Sunset Pillar Financial Brand
“We are seeing a lot of opportunities across our bank footprint and nationally, our multifamily lending base continues to be robust,” says Paul Woodworth, senior vice president and head of agency lending for SunTrust.
ATLANTA, GA—SunTrust Banks is ending its use of the the Pillar Financial brand name, effective today. The bank says it has integrated Pillar’s capabilities into the SunTrust Commercial Real Estate platform as a core capability of the bank.
“Pillar has been a fantastic addition to our commercial real estate platform, filling a unique need for our clients, and making SunTrust one of a select few Agency lenders. This change reflects both how Pillar fits seamlessly into our capability set and how we go to market in advising our clients as one team,” said Kathy Farrell, commercial real estate executive at SunTrust.
“We really acquired pillar to fill a void in our commercial real estate offerings,” Paul Woodworth, senior vice president and head of agency lending for SunTrust, tells GlobeSt.com. “We wanted to go to the market as one team, we did not want to bring confusion to the client base.”
With these fully integrated capabilities, SunTrust offers a suite of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD-insured loan products to owners of multifamily housing and healthcare properties across the country. SunTrust provides third party servicing of these and other loans through Cohen Financial. Cohen Financial, which was also part of the Pillar acquisition, will retain its name and continue to operate as a component of the SunTrust CRE line of business.
“We are seeing a lot of opportunities across our bank footprint and nationally, our multifamily lending base continues to be robust,” Woodworth says. “We’re still seeing good job growth and absorption, and we continue to put construction dollars out there.”