Layoffs at St. Pete bank grow to 78 as company cuts Maryland jobs

Days after cutting nearly 60 jobs in Clearwater, BayFirst Financial is laying off an additional 20 employees in a Maryland office.

The job cuts, according to a letter provided to the state and which mirrors the previous notification, are due to the company’s decision to discontinue its national mortgage division because of a “continuing decline in mortgage volume leading to division losses, along with the uncertainty of the outlook of mortgage lending in the near- to mid-term.”

The affected employees work in an office just outside of Baltimore. The layoffs will begin Nov. 25.

BayFirst announced the layoffs in a letter to the state to meet WARN requirements, for which companies must provide the state with Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification notices when making job cuts according to federal law.

The company previously notified the state in late September that it was cutting 58 jobs in its Clearwater mortgage division.

In both letters, the company says it “will continue to originate mortgages in its local, nine-county bank footprint.”

BayFirst Financial is the holding company for St. Petersburg-based BayFirst National Bank, formerly First Home Bank.