Bank First : November 2020 Shareholder Newsletter

SHAREHOLDER

NEWS

NOVEMBER 2020

Charter Bankshares, Inc. set to acquire Bank First’s Chetek location

Charter Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Charter Bankshares, Inc., (“Charter Bank”) and Bank First, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank First Corporation (“Bank First”) have received regulatory approvals for Charter Bank to purchase liabilities (deposit accounts and safe deposit boxes) from Bank First’s branch in Chetek, Wisconsin in a cash transaction. As part of the Agreement, Bank First will maintain assets (loans) and will continue to service loan customers. The transaction is scheduled to close on Friday, December 11, 2020.

“We are delighted to have found a friend and partner in Charter Bank,” stated Mike Molepske. “Similar to Bank First, Charter Bank is community-focused and has a long history of serving local families, nonprofit organizations, and businesses. With its headquarters in Eau Claire, Charter Bank will be able to provide personalized service to Chetek and the surrounding communities and can better support the dedicated team of bankers in the Chetek branch. While we will miss our Chetek customers and employees, we know we are leaving them in very good hands, and they will be able to benefit from Charter Bank’s excellent customer service and wide array of products.”

MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

To our shareholders,

I write this letter to you as we all continue to navigate these difficult times. The pandemic has upended our lives and has impacted our employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the communities we serve. Our front line employees have been working tirelessly to assist our customers with all of their financial needs, supported by our operations team which is focused on making their jobs easier through innovation and continuous process improvement. The Bank First senior management team continues to build nimbleness throughout our organization. Their combined effort financial results.

We are proud to announce that across almost all line items, the most recently ended quarter was the strongest in the company’s history. This incredibly strong quarter is the result of Bank First’s long-term commitment to our promise to be a “relationship-based community bank.” The financial results for the past quarter were not the result of months of work, but rather years of our team diligently living the bank’s promise, culture and vision.

In the third quarter of 2020, the net income of the bank rose to $11 million, an increase of 64.5% from the same quarter last year. There are many contributing factors to this improvement, with the largest being our ability to maintain our net interest margin. Our team’s ability to maintain this margin is the result of our relationship- based focus on checking, savings, and money market accounts over transactional certificates of deposit.

The investments in people and technology Bank First has made in our retail mortgage business over the past year, combined with low interest rates, resulted in the bank experiencing record mortgage production for the three months ending September 30, 2020. During the quarter, Bank First closed 638 mortgages, an increase of 18% and 116% from the previous quarter and the same period last year, respectively.

Although the banking industry experienced sluggish loan growth in the quarter just ended, Bank First grew loans at an annualized rate of nearly…