Company: MCHB
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001518715-25-000066
Chunk: 24

Company: Mechanics Bancorp
Filing Date: 2025-04-15
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 24
---
 crafted our whistleblower policy to make clear our commitment to providing a confidential process by which individuals can raise questions and concerns about potential misconduct, including potential violations of law, regulation or Company policy, and report potential misconduct while strictly prohibiting any attempt by any director, officer or employee of the Company to identify whistleblowers or retaliate or attempt to retaliate against any whistleblower, anonymous or otherwise. Nothing in the policy is intended to prohibit or impede the reporting of alleged accounting irregularities or securities violations, or anything else covered by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Act or any other applicable law directly to the SEC whether or not an initial report is made internally to the Company.

We provide information on how to access our third-party whistleblower hotline, EthicsPoint, by telephone or through the Internet on both our internal human resources website and our external investor relations website at http://ir.homestreet.com .

<div align='center'>18</div>

At each regular meeting the Audit Committee discusses whistleblower reports, if any, with the Ethics Compliance Officer, including all new reports received since the last meeting, any ongoing whistleblower investigations, and the resolution of any closed investigation.

#### Principles of Corporate Governance
The Company has adopted Principles of Corporate Governance, which can be found on our investor relations website: http://ir.homestreet.com . Shareholders may request a free copy of the Principles of Corporate Governance at the address or phone number set forth above.

#### Director Independence
The Board has determined that, with the exception of Mark K. Mason, our Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, all of its members are “independent directors” as that term is defined in the listing standards of Nasdaq and, where applicable, the regulations adopted under Sections 10A and 10C of the Exchange Act. In the course of determining the independence of each nonemployee director, the Board considered the annual amount of HomeStreet’s sales to, or purchases from, any company where a nonemployee director serves as an executive officer as well as all other relevant facts and circumstances, including the director’s commercial, accounting, legal, banking, consulting, charitable and familial relationships.

#### Board Inclusion
Our Principles of Corporate Governance include a commitment to inclusion as a guideline for our director nomination process. In particular, the guideline provides that the Board and N&G Committee “will actively seek to include highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups in the pool of candidates from which nominees for director positions are chosen.” The N&G Committee continues to consider inclusion an important