Profit slips at Alliance Financial in Q2

SYRACUSE — The ongoing low interest rate environment pushed profit lower at Alliance Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ALNC) in the second quarter, despite growth in the banking company’s loan portfolio.

Syracuse–based Alliance earned $2.9 million, or 61 cents a share, for the quarter, down from $3.5 million, or 73 cents a share, a year earlier. Low interest rates put pressure on the bank’s net interest margin, which drove profit lower, according to Alliance.

Loan growth helped offset some of the decrease.

“Our loan portfolio grew at an annualized rate of 13 percent in the second quarter with broad-based loan growth in each of our commercial, residential, and indirect portfolios as we continue to capture market share,” Alliance President and CEO Jack Webb said in a news release. “Loan originations across all our business lines totaled more than $106 million in the second quarter, which was an increase of 98 percent from the second quarter of 2011, and was up 47 percent from the first quarter of this year.”

Alliance Financial has 29 Alliance Bank branches in Cortland, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga, and Oswego counties. The company also runs an investment management administration center in Buffalo and an equipment lease financing company.

Alliance is the number four bank in the Syracuse metro area deposit market with $827.8 million in deposits and a market share of 7.9 percent, according to the latest statistics from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

For more on this story, see Friday’s issue of The Central New York Business Journal.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com