How One Florida Bank Is Betting the Planet on Relationships

When Ken LaRoe quit his job at a much larger Florida bank in frustration, he didn’t just walk away—he walked straight into his third act as a banker. This time, he was resolved to build something that wouldn’t get swallowed by a bigger fish. The result? Climate First Bank, which has grown from a 2021 charter to nearly $1.8 billion in assets and is on track to hit $10 billion within the next few years.

What makes Climate First’s rise remarkable isn’t some Silicon Valley tech play or a crypto gamble. It’s the oldest banking trick in the book: relationships. LaRoe bootstrapped the bank using his existing network of investors, hired lenders who already knew their markets, and built technology that strengthens personal connections rather than replacing them. The strategy has paid off in spades, particularly in residential solar financing, where Climate First has become the second-largest provider in the country through its affiliated platform, OneEthos.

The real story, though, is how this bank is filling a gap that the mega-banks left behind. While Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi control 42 percent of all federally insured bank assets, they originate just 11 percent of commercial real estate mortgages, 18 percent of small business loans, and 11 percent of construction loans. Community banks like Climate First, representing only 11 percent of assets, handle 31 percent of commercial real estate mortgages, 32 percent of small business loans, and 33 percent of construction loans. The math is simple: big banks chase big deals. Community banks build the infrastructure that communities actually need.

Director of Project Finance Hana Freymiller describes her work on what she calls the“messy middle”—those $15 to $20 million projects that are complex enough to require federal, state, and local subsidies plus multiple financing partners, yet too modest to attract the attention of larger lenders. These are battery storage systems, mid-scale solar farms, and hybrid energy projects that vary so much in structure and cashflow that there’s no template to follow. Every deal is a snowflake, she says. But Freymiller doesn’t work alone. Her deals go through the bank’s loan committee, which meets weekly and includes board members like Chief Sustainability Officer Chris Castro—people who’ve built deep expertise in energy project finance. That collective competency is what allows Climate First to say yes to deals that other lenders won’t touch.

What’s particularly clever is how Climate First sees itself not as a final destination but as a catalyst for scaling. The bank is recruiting other community and regional lenders to use OneEthos and to partner on the pipeline of projects coming Freymiller’s way. She’s explicit about the need: as developers come back for repeat deals, they eventually hit borrowing limits. Freymiller can’t do it alone, even with strong developers. She needs partners who understand these“messy middle”deals well enough to co-lend or participate. That willingness to teach other institutions rather than hoard opportunity is the philosophy of an organization thinking beyond its own balance sheet.

The broader signal here matters. In an era when community banking has been in steady decline—consolidated into regional and national juggernauts—Climate First is proof that there’s still room for institutions built on trust, local knowledge, and a mission beyond quarterly earnings. The bank’s rapid growth isn’t happening because it beat larger competitors at their own game. It’s happening because it’s playing a different game entirely, one where relationships, expertise, and long-term thinking trump speed and scale. In a climate crisis that demands massive, rapid deployment of renewable energy, that approach might be exactly what the moment requires.