Company: BCTF
Filing Date: 2025-03-06
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001552781-25-000058
Chunk: 4

Company: Bancorp 34, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-06
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 4
---
of total deposits, driving a total average deposit cost of 2.49% for the year ended December 31, 2024. A key element of our funding strategy
is a focus on commercial and consumer banking relationships in our markets, specifically growing traditional commercial and industrial
relationships. Additionally, we believe our treasury management business will continue to benefit our attractive funding base.

Continue
our greater Southern Arizona and New Mexico market expansion. The greater Phoenix and Tucson
markets have been top strategic priorities for our organization from an organic and acquisition perspective. The Arizona market has been
our fastest growing market and its robust economy will allow for growth opportunity. In addition to our organic expansion, deposits added
through the acquisition of the CBOA business represented approximately 42.9% of our deposit base as of December 31, 2024, and we anticipate
growing our Southern Arizona deposit base in the years to come.

Engage
in Opportunistic M&A. Our executive team will continue to evaluate acquisitions that we believe
could produce attractive returns for our stockholders. These could include fee-based businesses, whole bank or branch acquisitions that
would improve or expand our market position into geographies with attractive demographics and business trends, expand our existing branch
network in existing markets, enhance our earnings power or product and service offerings.

7

Competition

The financial services
industry is highly competitive and we compete for loans, deposits and customer relationships in our geographic footprint. We compete
with commercial banks, credit unions, savings institutions, mortgage banking firms, consumer finance companies, securities brokerage
firms, insurance companies, money market funds and other mutual funds, loan production offices and other providers of financial services,
including nontraditional financial technology companies or FinTech companies, as well as super-regional, national and international financial
institutions that operate offices in our market areas and elsewhere. Many of our nonbank competitors which are not subject to the same
extensive federal regulations that govern bank holding companies and banks, may have certain competitive advantages.

We compete for loans
principally through the quality of our client service and our responsiveness to client needs in addition to competing on interest rates
and loan fees. Management believes that our long-standing presence in the community and personal one-on-one service philosophy enhances
our ability to compete favorably in attracting and retaining individual and business customers. We actively solicit deposit-related clients
and compete for deposits by offering personal attention, competitive interest rates, and professional services made available through
experienced bankers and multiple delivery channels