June 1, 2000

Real Estate Buzz

Lynnwood Mortgage tees up a new name

Nineteen-year-old Lynnwood Mortgage Co. has made the switch to become a full-service savings bank called, of all things, Golf Savings Bank.

The change means the six-office company will not only make loans but also take deposits by offering checking and savings accounts. Mortgage companies issue loans and then sell them to big investors, recycling the limited pool of private funds they lend. Thus they don't require a lot of their own capital and don't collect deposits.

Savings banks, like commercial banks, fund loans with deposits. They have to maintain adequate investor capital to cover paying back deposits even if loans go unpaid.

"We've already learned the toughest part of banking -- creating quality loans -- and now we want to put our efforts into providing customers with the finest in full-service banking," said the organization's founder, chairman and CEO, Charles Ainslee.

Ainslee

Add to Ainslee's titles "lead character" and you'll begin to understand why a bank would choose such a name as Golf.

The 130-employee company's PR material quotes Ainslee saying he would have lettered in golf his first year at the University of Washington "were it not for my distaste for the dress code." He went on to not only letter but captain the golf team and receive a degree in business while protecting his healthy distaste for dress codes.

After working 12 years at Seattle Mortgage Co., Ainslee started Lynnwood Mortgage in 1981. Ainslee displayed his moxie by starting the business during a time of astronomical interest rates, but he had no choice but to go out on his own: "I was the opposite of what banks were looking for."

Now 59, Ainslee wears his hair in a ponytail, his mustache in a walrus configuration and dresses decidedly down in jeans and T-shirt -- except when meetings require a more bankerly uniform, he stipulates.

His office "has the appearance of a golf pro shop," state's the bank's description. "It has an assortment of clubs, memorabilia, books, tapes and autographed pictures from famous golfers. The golf channel runs nonstop on a large-screen television."

The description notes that Ainslee's attire would "quickly get him jettisoned from any of his favorite country clubs."

For the past eight years, Lynnwood Mortgage gave $20,000 per year to the UW women's golf program, along with contributing to other non-golf local causes. Now comes the naming of the new savings bank. Ainslee, a 3-handicapper, views golf as "a metaphor for life" representing "honesty, integrity and character.

The name Golf Savings represents those things, and that's how we operate." The bank will market itself to non-golfers as well, Ainslee said. The six outlets, all in Lynnwood, will nevertheless bear a "golf theme," the bank said. Golf Savings Bank's written material didn't elaborate, leaving it to the imagination whether golf carts will be involved in the drive-thru and, in fact, what new meaning "drive-thru" may take.

The bank starts with about $100 million in assets.

In addition to Ainslee, the executive ranks include: