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Competition / Competitors We face substantial competition in all areas of our operations from various competitors including Internet banks and national, regional and community banks within the markets in which we serve. We also compete with many other types of financial institutions, such as savings and loan institutions, credit unions, mortgage companies, other finance companies, brokerage firms, insurance companies, factoring companies and other financial intermediaries. Our services are primarily offered over the Internet. While providing many competitive advantages, some customers may prefer a more traditional branch footprint. Additionally, because we offer our services primarily over the Internet, we compete for customers nationally. As a result, our competitors range from small community banks to the largest international financial institutions. Competition for deposit products is generally based on pricing because of the ease with which customers can transfer deposits from one institution to another. Our multi-channel deposit strategy has lower fixed operating costs than traditional models because we do not incur the expenses associated with primarily operating through a traditional branch network. In order to generate deposits, we pass a portion of these cost savings to our customers through competitive interest rates and fees. In addition to price competition, we also seek to increase our deposit market share through product differentiation by offering deposit products that provide investment capabilities such as our WorldCurrency R , MarketSafe R and EverBank Metals Select sm deposit products. Competition for loans is also often driven by interest rates, loan origination and related fees and services. Because of our lower cost structure relative to our competition, we are often able to offer borrowers more favorable interest rates than may be available from other lenders. In addition, because we originate assets to hold on our balance sheet as well as sell in the secondary markets, we seek to attract borrowers by offering loan products such as jumbo residential mortgage loans that may not be available from other lenders. In addition to price competition and product differentiation, we also compete based on the accessibility of our product offerings through our multiple distribution channels. Finally, we seek to distinguish our products and services from other Internet banks through the quality of our online offerings and website functionality.