BANKING/ FINANCE : Little Plaza S&L; Looms Large Among Mortgage Lenders

Plaza Savings & Loan may be small, but the Santa Ana thrift plays in the big leagues.

An aggressive mortgage-banking operation has landed the thrift among the state’s 30 largest providers of residential loans, according to information provided to a state industry trade group by Dataquick Information Systems in San Diego.

Last year, Plaza loaned more than $601 million to home buyers, ranking it 21st on the list and ahead of such industry giants as First Nationwide Bank in San Francisco.

American Savings Bank in Irvine was ranked fifth with nearly $1.8 billion in loans, and Guardian Savings in Huntington Beach was ranked 28th with $410 million. But American had $16 billion in assets at the end of the year, and Guardian had $682 million. Plaza had only $118 million in assets.

Actually, said John T. French, Plaza’s chairman, the Santa Ana thrift has about $200 million in assets, but much of it is transitory--loans made by the S&L; waiting to be sold in the secondary market. Tuesday morning, Plaza had about $116 million in loans ready to sell, he said.

Plaza is strictly home-loan-oriented, he said. Besides providing loans to home buyers, it also makes loans to refinance home mortgages. Altogether, the thrift funded $1.5 billion in loans for home purchases and refinancings last year, French said.

The mortgage-banking business also has pumped up earnings at the 5-year-old thrift. It earned $2.1 million last year, well above institutions of similar size, and its performance should please some of its heavyweight shareholders, such as developers George Argyros and James M. Peters and Knott’s Berry Farm heir Marion Knott Anderson.

But it pleases French the most. He is the biggest of Plaza’s 16 shareholders, owning more than 22% of the thrift’s stock.