For investors seeking a play in the financial industry, Berkshire Hills Bancorp (NYSE:BHLB) is an excellent, low-risk bet.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp is the holding company for Berkshire Bank and Berkshire Insurance Group. The bank operates throughout Western Massachusetts, Southern Vermont and Northeastern New York and it maintains branches in four regions: Berkshire County Region, New York Region, Springfield Region and Vermont Region. It offers a variety of deposit, lending, insurance, and wealth management products to retail, commercial, not-for-profit, and municipal customers in its market areas.

Impressive Recent Results

Berkshire Hills Bancorp posted an impressive $0.54 in core EPS for the third quarter of 2015, a full 17 percent increase over the prior year.

For investors looking to diversify larger financial holdings, Berkshire's results are in contrast to lower earnings per share posted by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), as well as declines in revenue for JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

The company noted in its quarterly release that the bank produced strong quarterly core EPS growth, fueled by improvements in margins and core profitability. Organic loan growth continues to increase, and the company is confident in its financial and risk management disciplines.

Gaining Traction: Many Mergers and Acquisitions

Berkshire acquired Hampden Bancorp and completed the merger recently. As a result, Berkshire Hills currently has over $7.5 billion in assets and 98 branches that serve New England and central New York. In addition, the bank's outstanding common stock increased to approximately 29.5 million shares for a market capitalization that exceeds $800 million.

On October 30, the bank announced its agreement to purchase a unit from Park Bancorp in Washington Township, New Jersey, which focuses on SBA loans, and it purchased 20 retail locations from Bank of America in 2014.

In addition, Berkshire Hills completed the acquisition and merger of Firestone Financial in the third quarter, which expanded the bank's potential for increasing scale and cross sales via Firestone's market. Through its acquisitions, Berkshire Hills stands poised for growth in SBA and auto lending, thus adding to its portfolio of products and service offerings.

Strong Market Performance

Shares in Berkshire Hills have performed well in 2015, beginning the year around $26.21. The stock reached a low on January 21 of $24.32 and reached a high on October 28 of $29.88. Currently the stock trades near $28.98 for an increase this year of approximately 9 percent.

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Conclusion: A Strong Buying Opportunity

We are very optimistic on BHLB's prospects in the financial industry in 2016. Not only does this small institution boast solid fundamental growth, but compared to its larger peers (BAC and JPM, for example), it poses less risk.

Slightly below its annual high as shown above, BHLB stock is poised for additional growth at an attractive price.

We suggest reallocating a portion of long term investments towards BHLB in 2016. Among small bank peers, BHLB is larger (and with a larger net income) than the industry average yet has a lower P/E (17.8) than the 18.1 average. A comparable pick could also be United Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:UBNK), with similarly solid Q3 results, P/E of 17.7 although with a slightly smaller market cap ($652 million) and net income than BHLB.