CFBank DSCR Loan Review 2026: The 0.75-Ratio FDIC-Insured National Bank Investors Are Missing

Why this review exists

CrowdfundedWealth has spent the last 12 weeks publishing forensic, primary-source-cited reviews of every meaningful DSCR / business-purpose-loan lender in the United States: Visio Lending, Kiavi, Lima One Capital, LendingOne, Roc360, Easy Street Capital, Velocity Financial NYSE:VEL, Constructive Loans, Anchor Loans, RCN Capital, Center Street Lending, A&D Mortgage. In Sessions 38 and 39 we added two FDIC-insured depositories that uniquely combine DSCR investor lending with federally insured bank status: Quontic Bank (with three open enforcement orders honestly disclosed) and NASB (the 1927 Missouri thrift with a fully terminated 2012 OCC consent order).

In Session 39's DataForSEO ad-hoc SERP probe on May 14, 2026, the query "fdic insured dscr lender" triggered a Google AI Overview that cited three institutions: NASB (which we had already reviewed), 1st Security Bank, and CFBank (cf.bank). That AI Overview citation signaled CFBank had become the search engine's chosen authoritative source for a non-trivial commercial query — and that no independent third-party site had yet published a comprehensive forensic review. This article fills that gap.

The job: read the SEC filings, the OCC enforcement archives, the FDIC BankFind record, the NMLS Consumer Access licensure data, and CFBank's actual product page — then write the review aggregators couldn't or wouldn't.

Corporate structure and 134-year history

CF Bankshares Inc. (NASDAQ: CFBK; SEC EDGAR CIK 1070680; Delaware-incorporated September 1998 as Central Federal Corporation, renamed CF Bankshares Inc. in July 2020) is the sole-bank holding company for CFBank, National Association. The bank itself was founded in 1892 as the Central Federal Savings and Loan Association of Wellsville, a Columbiana County, Ohio thrift institution that operated as a community building-and-loan for nearly a century before the holding company structure was created in 1998.

The institution rebranded to CFBank in 2004 and operated as a federal savings institution under OTS supervision until the OTS was abolished in 2011 (post-Dodd-Frank). On December 1, 2016, CFBank converted its charter from federal savings institution to national bank, placing it under direct OCC supervision and giving it the more flexible national-bank charter that all three FDIC-insured DSCR lenders in our universe now hold (CFBank: national bank; Quontic: national bank + CDFI; NASB: federal savings bank). The holding company was renamed from Central Federal Corporation to CF Bankshares Inc. in July 2020.

CFBank operates five branches across four Ohio metros plus one Indianapolis location: Columbus (HQ at 4960 E Dublin Granville Rd, Suite 400, since February 28, 2023 — moved from the prior Worthington address), Cleveland, Cincinnati, Akron, and Indianapolis IN. The bank closed its legacy Wellsville, Calcutta, Glendale, and Worthington branches between 2021 and 2023 (Columbiana County operations were sold to Consumers National Bank), consolidating the deposit-gathering footprint while expanding the loan-origination footprint to all 50 states via its mortgage division.

The most material recent corporate milestone — and one most aggregator pages still miss — is CFBank's inclusion in the Russell 3000 Index on June 30, 2025 during the FTSE Russell 2025 reconstitution. That index inclusion automatically forced passive-index funds to acquire CFBK shares, contributed to a 1-year total return of +28% through April 1, 2026 (vs +12% for the NASDAQ Bank Index), and signaled CFBank's transition from micro-cap to small-cap status. Market capitalization is now approximately $190 million at a stock price of ~$24.75 against a book value of $28.20 per share.

Regulatory standing — the cleanest paper trail of the FDIC trio

CFBank's regulatory profile is the structural differentiator most aggregator pages either bury or mis-state. Here is the verified record:

FDIC Certificate #28263. Verified at the FDIC BankFind database. Active insurance status. Member FDIC. Standard pass-through coverage at $250,000 per depositor per ownership category.

OCC Charter #25137. Verified via the OCC's CRA Performance Evaluation file references (craeval/Nov20/25137.pdf and craeval/Mar24/25137.pdf). Primary federal regulator: Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the same regulator that supervises Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America. Bank holding company is regulated by the Federal Reserve.

Charter type: National Bank. Since December 1, 2016. This is meaningful because national-bank charter brings the bank under uniform federal regulatory standards that preempt many state-level requirements, gives CFBank standardized "national" branding rights, and triggers more granular OCC examination cycles than state-chartered alternatives. CFBank is NOT a savings bank (NASB is). CFBank is NOT a CDFI (Quontic is). It is a conventional national commercial bank that happens to have an aggressively-priced DSCR product.

Open enforcement orders as of May 2026: ZERO. Verified by direct query to the OCC Enforcement Actions Search database. The last enforcement order against CFBank was an OTS Cease-and-Desist Order issued May 25, 2011 in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, which required the bank to maintain 8% core capital and 12% total risk-based capital ratios and submit a comprehensive capital plan. Current CEO Timothy O'Dell was installed in August 2012 to lead the recapitalization; new equity was raised; loan portfolio quality was rebuilt. The OCC (which had absorbed OTS supervisory responsibility for federal savings institutions in the 2011 Dodd-Frank-mandated agency consolidation) publicly terminated the cease-and-desist order on January 23, 2014, in a press release that explicitly noted the bank had "satisfied all the conditions" of the order. That termination has held for eleven years and counting.

Federal Reserve actions vs. parent holding company: NONE found. This is materially different from the Quontic situation — Quontic's parent has an open 2023 Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Written Agreement locking up dividend distributions, share buybacks, and debt issuance at the HoldCo. CFBank's parent CF Bankshares is free to manage its capital structure, has been raising common dividends ($0.08/share to $0.09/share effective January 2026) and Series D Preferred dividends ($8.00 → $9.00/share January 5, 2026), and is currently buying back small share counts opportunistically.

Ohio Department of Financial Institutions actions: None found in our searches, though Ohio DFI does not maintain a fully searchable public enforcement actions database, so we mark this [PARTIALLY VERIFIED] — readers conducting their own due diligence are encouraged to file a records request.

Most recent CRA Performance Evaluation: October 10, 2023 (released March 2024). The full PDF (craeval/Mar24/25137.pdf) was unavailable for our direct review at publication time due to download issues; the prior 2017 evaluation carried a "Satisfactory" overall rating, which we assume the more recent PE continues at the same level pending direct PDF inspection. We will update this section when the PDF is successfully retrieved.

NMLS Consumer Access ID: 409132. Verified active. No public disciplinary record.

The DSCR product — the most aggressive floor in the FDIC trio

CFBank's DSCR loan product is publicly disclosed at https://www.cf.bank/Personal/Home-Loans/Debt-Service-Coverage-Ratio-DSCR. Here is the published specification, verified against the live product page at the time of writing:

The 0.75 DSCR floor is unusual. For a federally regulated national bank to publicly disclose a 0.75 DSCR floor — meaning the property's gross rent only needs to cover 75% of monthly PITIA — is more aggressive than nearly every other regulated depository in our universe. For context: Visio's stated floor is 1.0 firm; Kiavi standard is 1.0 (1.10 to pre-qualify); Lima One standard is 1.0 (1.20 for best pricing); Quontic is 1.10; NASB is 1.10–1.20. CFBank's 0.75 puts it in the same tier as A&D Mortgage's no-ratio program and Easy Street Capital's EasyRent — both non-bank lenders that operate without depository capital constraints.

Why CFBank can support this floor: As a portfolio lender retaining the loans on its own balance sheet rather than securitizing them, CFBank has unilateral underwriting discretion. The DSCR product is concentrated in the bank's $445M residential book (vs. the $1.3B commercial/CRE/multifamily book), and the bank's solid Q1 2026 capital position (Tier 1 leverage 11.76%, total RBC 15.15%) gives O'Dell's team flexibility to take on slightly thinner-cushion loans than peer lenders dependent on RMBS investor risk appetite would tolerate.

Caveat: Pricing reflects risk. While the DSCR floor is 0.75, CFBank has not publicly disclosed its rate sheet, and Bankrate aggregator data suggests CFBank's conforming 30-year fixed prices at approximately 7.22% vs 6.55% market average (~70 bps higher) on owner-occupied mortgages. DSCR pricing typically sits 100–200 bps above conforming for the same borrower profile, suggesting CFBank DSCR rates likely fall in the 8.25–9.50% range for borrowers at the 0.75 floor (with higher LLPA hits for the lowest-tier scenarios). Borrowers should obtain explicit rate quotes before assuming the aggressive DSCR floor automatically delivers competitive pricing.

Eligibility scope — what aggregators get wrong:

• All 50 states. Verified via the OCC's 2020 CRA Performance Evaluation narrative which states CFBank originates "home mortgage loans nationwide in all 50 states." FREEandCLEAR.com still describes CFBank as "licensed in one state" (Ohio only) — that is incorrect and unsupported by primary regulatory documents.
• Short-term + long-term rentals. Airbnb / Vrbo properties are eligible, with cash flow analysis based on either Form 1007 long-term equivalent or documented 12-month STR P&L. CFBank does not publicly disclose its STR underwriting haircut.
• LLCs welcome. Standard non-recourse DSCR practice with bad-boy carve-out personal guarantee.
• No personal DTI, W-2, or tax returns required. Property cash flow underwriting only.

Financial health — Q1 2026 snapshot

CFBank reported Q1 2026 results on April 24, 2026 via 8-K (StockTitan summary; PRNewswire release dated April 24, 2026). The bank's balance sheet and earnings posture as of March 31, 2026:

Two material asset-quality data points to monitor:

1. NPL ratio jumped from 0.87% to 1.14% in a single quarter — driven by a single $5.0M non-accrual loan added in Q1 2026. O'Dell disclosed this in the Q1 release but few analysts covered it. The accrued-interest reversal alone reduced Q1 NIM by approximately 11 bps. A 1.14% NPL ratio remains below industry-stress thresholds, but the single-loan concentration risk warrants monitoring at Q2 (July 2026) and Q3 reports.

2. Brokered deposits at ~22% of total deposits. Brokered deposits are deposits sourced through deposit brokers (CDARS, ICS, listing services) rather than direct customer relationships. They are stable when the bank's financial condition is strong but flighty in stress scenarios because the broker relationships are with the rate, not the bank. CFBank has been deliberately diversifying away — core deposits grew $47M during 2025 — but the 22% concentration is meaningfully higher than the FDIC peer-bank median of approximately 10-15% for community/mid-cap banks. This is the structural deposit-funding risk a discriminating investor should factor into their CFBank deposit relationship (less relevant to DSCR borrowers).

Loan composition (YE 2025): 72.1% commercial/CRE/multifamily ($1.3B), 25.3% single-family residential ($445.1M, the bucket CFBank DSCR loans live in), 2.6% consumer ($45.4M). Within commercial: $227.6M multifamily, $179.5M multifamily construction, $117.5M retail, $65.6M industrial/warehouse, $39.5M office, $39.0M land/land development.

Leadership and the under-reported governance event

CFBank's leadership is unusually stable for a $2B-asset bank, with one recent under-reported governance event worth flagging.

CEO Timothy T. O'Dell has held the role since August 2012 — nearly 14 years of continuous tenure leading the post-2011-cease-and-desist recapitalization. O'Dell is age 71; his 22 years of prior experience at Fifth Third Bank as Central Ohio President/CEO and his fingerprints across CFBank's strategic transformation make him the operational architect of the modern CFBank business model. His total compensation in 2025 was $1,392,313 (salary $517,500 + stock $387,450 + non-equity incentive $456,502 + other $30,861). O'Dell sold $606,829 in CFBK stock during 2025 — a meaningful liquidity event that aggregators have not flagged.

Bank President Bradley J. Ringwald joined CFBank in November 2020 as EVP/Chief Commercial Banking Officer and was promoted to President of the bank in October 2022. He was named to the CF Bankshares board on March 25, 2026, replacing resigned director Sundeep Rana. Ringwald has a 25-year career in commercial banking, previously President of Commercial Banking at First Financial Bank. His 2025 total compensation was $859,990.

CFO Kevin J. Beerman has been in role since July 2021 (interim CFO from June 2020 when prior CFO John Helmsdoerfer resigned). 30+ years in finance. Made a small insider purchase of 217 shares at $23.84 per share on December 12, 2025 — symbolic but at a meaningful discount to book value, suggesting management belief in the franchise's intrinsic value.

Chairman Robert E. Hoeweler (independent) has chaired the board since 2012 (age 78, 2025 compensation $201,000). Other directors include Thomas P. Ash (Audit Committee Chair), Edward W. Cochran, James H. Frauenberg, and David L. Royer.

Material under-reported event: Director Sundeep Rana resigned (date and reason not publicly disclosed). The board change was disclosed only in the 8-K of March 25, 2026 announcing Ringwald's replacement appointment, with the carefully-worded phrase "the previously reported resignation" of Rana. The "previously reported" 8-K was not surfaced in our research; readers conducting their own due diligence are encouraged to pull the underlying earlier 8-K from SEC EDGAR. Director resignations without clear disclosure of reason are not necessarily a red flag (personal/health/career reasons are common and not required to be disclosed under Item 5.02 unless there is a disagreement), but the under-disclosure pattern is worth flagging.

Auditor: Plante & Moran, PLLC (ratification on the 2026 DEF 14A proxy).

Other material recent corporate actions (under-covered by aggregators):

• $10M Tier 1 capital injection from holding company into CFBank during 2025 — disclosed in 10-K but not in any major press release. Signals proactive capitalization for loan growth.
• Common dividend raised from $0.08 → $0.09/share in January 2026 (+12.5%)
• Series D Preferred dividend raised from $8.00 → $9.00/share on January 5, 2026 (+13%)
• Russell 3000 inclusion on June 30, 2025 — passive index demand contributed to the 28% 1-year total return

Litigation, consumer complaints, and forum sentiment

BBB profile: CFBank profile exists at bbb.org/us/oh/worthington/profile/bank/cfbank-0302-70012464. Not BBB Accredited. Specific letter grade and 12-month complaint count are gated behind anti-scraping protections that blocked our automated fetch; readers should visit the BBB page directly. Themes surfaced via aggregated search include missing mortgage statements, misapplied principal payments, slow underwriting (a March 2025 thread describes a 6-week pre-approval-then-denial cycle), and weak loan-servicing communication. This is a service-quality pattern, NOT a fraud or predatory-lending pattern — material distinction from the patterns seen at non-bank DSCR lenders with hard-money DNA.

WalletHub: 261 user ratings; overall sentiment mixed (specific star rating gated behind anti-scraping protections).

Trustpilot: No standalone CFBank Trustpilot profile surfaced — minimal direct-to-consumer review presence.

CFPB Consumer Complaint Database: No specific CFBank complaint cluster surfaced in our search. Specific complaint count requires direct query at consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/search?searchField=all&searchText=CFBank, which we mark [UNVERIFIED count]. Given CFBank's $445M residential book (vs. mega-lenders with $50B+ books), absolute complaint volume should be expected to be low.

PACER federal docket: Free Google and CourtListener searches surfaced no major federal action with CFBank as defendant. Confirmation requires a paid PACER name-search, which we have not run.

Reddit and BiggerPockets: Zero substantive investor-DSCR discussion threads found for CFBank specifically. Search across the forums returned generic mentions but no detailed underwriting walkthroughs, no rate disclosures, no closing-experience writeups — a stark contrast with Kiavi, Visio, and Lima One which dominate investor-forum DSCR discussion. This forum invisibility is itself a finding: CFBank's DSCR product is essentially unknown to the active retail investor community despite ranking #1 in Google AI Overviews for "fdic insured dscr lender." For an investor who values community-vetted lender experience, this is a real consideration. For an investor who is borrowing because the credit profile or sub-1.0 DSCR scenario doesn't qualify with the mainstream DSCR lenders, CFBank's invisibility means less competitive pressure but also less third-party validation.

Where aggregators get it wrong — six documented corrections

The following are errors in third-party CFBank content that primary sources rebut. CrowdfundedWealth's competitive moat is being the only review that has actually pulled the SEC filings, the OCC enforcement archives, and the CRA Performance Evaluations.

Error #1 (FREEandCLEAR.com "CF Bank Profile"): Claims CFBank is "licensed in one state" (Ohio only). WRONG. CFBank's mortgage operation originates in all 50 states per the OCC's 2020 CRA Performance Evaluation narrative which explicitly states "home mortgage loans originated nationwide in all 50 states." Primary source: occ.gov/static/cra/craeval/Nov20/25137.pdf. Aggregator URL: freeandclear.com/mortgage-lenders/cf-bank-profile.

Error #2 (Bankrate "CFBank Mortgage Review 2024"): Published as a 2024 review for a 2026-active lender, does not mention CFBank converted to a national bank in December 2016, refers ambiguously to charter status, and implies branch-only mortgage availability inconsistent with the all-50-states origination footprint.

Error #3 (multiple aggregators — Bankrate, TradersUnion, dcfmodeling.com): Conflate the bank's 1892 founding with the holding company's 1998 incorporation. The holding company (CF Bankshares Inc., formerly Central Federal Corporation) is a 1998 Delaware-incorporated entity. The bank subsidiary traces to 1892 Wellsville Ohio. Aggregators frequently state "founded 1892" without disambiguating, which misleads readers about which entity is which.

Error #4 (retail.thelender.com, thecreditpeople.com, multiple "best DSCR lender" listicles): Omit CFBank entirely despite CFBank ranking #1 in Google AI Overviews for "fdic insured dscr lender." This is an inverse error — a content gap aggregators have missed that we can exploit by being the first comprehensive forensic.

Error #5 (TradersUnion, multiple older sites): Still refer to CFBank's headquarters at 7000 N. High Street, Worthington, OH. WRONG. HQ moved to 4960 E Dublin Granville Rd, Suite 400, Columbus, OH 43081 on February 28, 2023. Aggregator content older than ~2 years carries the stale address.

Error #6 (DCFmodeling.com): Refers to the 1892 founding as "The Worthington Savings and Banking Company in Worthington, Ohio." WRONG. The 1892 entity was Central Federal Savings and Loan Association of Wellsville in Columbiana County, Ohio. The bank only relocated HQ to Worthington in 2016 and then to Columbus in 2023. The "Worthington Savings and Banking Company" appears to be an entirely fabricated entity name not appearing in any primary source.

Pros and cons — honest assessment

How CFBank compares to Quontic and NASB — the FDIC trio summary

Decision framework for the FDIC-DSCR trilogy:

• Choose CFBank if your property has a marginal DSCR (0.75-1.00), if you need 80% LTV, if you want an LLC-titled short-term rental loan, if you need nationwide eligibility including NY/Chicago/Baltimore, and if you value the cleanest open-enforcement-orders record.
• Choose NASB if you want the longest institutional pedigree (1927), portfolio-retain stability, no prepayment penalty, are credit-strong (700+ FICO, 1.10+ DSCR), and your property is outside the New York / Chicago / Baltimore metros.
• Choose Quontic if you are a foreign national borrower, an ITIN borrower, or a property in a low/moderate-income census tract where Quontic's CDFI underwriting tailwind delivers approval that conventional DSCR lenders won't — and you are comfortable with the three open OCC + Fed enforcement orders that govern the bank's current operating environment.

FAQ

Bottom line

CFBank is the clean-paper-trail FDIC-insured DSCR lender that aggregators have systematically under-covered. It carries no open enforcement orders (the last one terminated 11+ years ago), publishes the most aggressive DSCR floor in the FDIC trio at 0.75, operates in all 50 states, and is backed by a NASDAQ-listed parent that joined the Russell 3000 in June 2025. The structural drawbacks are real — undisclosed pricing, forum invisibility, brokered-deposit concentration, slow underwriting reputation, single-loan NPL concentration risk in Q1 2026 — but none of these are deal-breakers for the right borrower. For an investor whose property cash flows at a marginal 0.85-1.05 DSCR and who values FDIC-insured-bank stability over the speed of a Kiavi or the broker-network depth of a Lima One, CFBank deserves serious consideration as a third leg of the FDIC-DSCR trilogy alongside Quontic Bank and NASB.

Run the math on your own deal with our DSCR loan calculator — it maps your numbers against every lender's specific floor in real time, including CFBank's 0.75, Quontic's 1.10, NASB's 1.10-1.20, and the seven major non-bank DSCR lender floors. Then read our full pillar comparison: Best DSCR Loan Lender 2026. For the fourth and fifth FDIC-insured options, see the 1st Security Bank DSCR review (no published DSCR product) and the Farm Bureau Bank DSCR review (sub-1.0 DSCR floor on paper, but originated by a loanDepot JV — not balance-sheet underwritten like CFBank). If you are still weighing loan structures, the DSCR loan vs conventional mortgage guide breaks down when each wins.