Bankers make relationships that bind communities with loans, advice, charitable transactions
Athlete Nate Richie’s passion for exercise sparked his interest in launching a small business. Next came Bear KompleX fitness gear and KompleX Nutrition outlets in Crown Point.
But in between, he needed a commercial lender.
He might have chosen any one of the dozen-plus community and regional banks operating out of more than 200 branch offices from Hammond to South Bend.
First he spoke with representatives from two larger institutions: a local branch of an East Coast megabank and a large downstate bank that makes billions of dollars in loans across the Midwest. He chose to go smaller and more local.
“From the beginning, it was a lot easier to deal with Peoples Bank in terms of looking for business loans than what we experienced with others in the past,” he said.
They helped him realize his goal.
“I worked out all my life,” Richie said. “About 10 years ago, I saw a need for fitness products better than anything that was out there. We launched the business and went from one product to 350 different SKUs.”
When it was time to expand, he went back to the banker he knew.
“We needed more warehouse space as we continued to grow out of buildings,” Richie said. “It all cost money, and Peoples Bank came in to help us. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.”
Peoples Bank opened 110 years ago and has headquarters in Munster. It holds $2 billion in assets and operates 26 locations in Indiana and Illinois. It is among a handful of native-born banks still calling Northern Indiana home.
“Regional and community banks are the life blood of the area’s economy,” said Lorri Feldt, regional director of the Indiana Small Business Development Center in Crown Point.
Serving local economy
Anthony Sindone, an associate professor at Indiana University Northwest’s School of Business and Economics, explained that community and regional banks put a premium on serving local customers.
“These bankers don’t have to answer to some corporate headquarters in New York City,” Sindone said. “They live here with their families and know the area.
“Most of the people at Centier (Bank) were born and raised in this area, better than any major bank would. People like that.”
Centier Bank is Indiana’s largest private bank owned by the Schrage family since its founding in 1895. It holds $8 billion in assets and has 55 branches in Northern and Central Indiana.
“We don’t just focus on looking for clients through the eyes of a lender,” said Carla Houck, vice president and regional sales manager for Merrillville’s Centier Bank. “They may need somebody who is going to partner with them.
“Most of our business-owner clients live here. Our frontline people know their clients’ kids’ names and milestones. We are vested in that client’s life.”
Houck started her banking career in 1979 as a teller.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I got out of high school,” she said. “So, I went to a temp agency that had a job at a Hammond savings and loan — taking deposits, cashing checks and recording mortgage payments.”
She spent the next four decades taking business courses, working, raising a family, finishing her college degree online and returning to work. She said her on-the-job experience grounded her in a way schooling alone might not have.
“I can relate to so many other people who were working and trying to go to school to further themselves,” she said. “It’s really helped me gain an awareness of what others are going through and to then give guidance to people along the way.”
She said she now handles commercial banking, which its her personality.
“When you work in retail, you have to be able to react quickly,” she said. “When you are talking about somebody’s business and livelihood, you don’t have time to sit and wait for the perfect answer.”
She said helping people is something she can relate to.
“I decided if I was going to work for a bank, it would have to be a bank that really cared about the community,” Houck said. “That is what has kept me passionate about my job.”
Houck is one of more 31,500 bankers working at 132 banks holding $195 billion in deposits across the state, according to Evan Hoffmeyer, a vice president at the Indiana Bankers Association.
Partner in success
Daniel Duncan is another banker who values his relationships with customers. He is a vice president and a business banking team leader for Peoples Bank.
He graduated from St. Xavier University of Chicago, worked briefly as a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and has a master’s degree in business administration from Indiana University Northwest.
“We get out in the community and sit down and visit a lot of people in their workplace,” he said. “Every day brings different challenges and rewards. The ability to help people is the majority of what we do.”
He said, to be a good banker, you must listen to clients and read their needs when they are trying to get a small business off the ground.
“I’d ask them ‘Why do you think it’s a good idea? How do you think you are going to make money? What are your projections and business plan? How are we going to go from nothing to something,’” Duncan said.
He said businesses vary, but the process focuses on personal relationships.
“We had a gentleman who opened his own funeral home in East Chicago, who just recently expanded to a second location,” Duncan said. “We had another expanding a Montessori school into Valparaiso.”
Others need a little help getting started.
“I dealt with a guy who was driving a truck for somebody else, and he wanted to work on his own, so we helped him finance his own semi-truck for the first time,” Duncan said. “Everybody starts small.”
He said some deals take years to come to fruition.
“And it takes time … years from my first meeting with them for their project to get off the ground,” Duncan said.
Duncan also knows when clients need more help than he can provide. He sometimes steers entrepreneurs to the Indiana Small Business Development Center, funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the state of Indiana. It offers cost-free advice.
Feldt, who runs the Northwest Indiana division, said local lenders frequently refer customers to her center to help them begin to manage their expenses.
“Both the local banks and the center are on the same side of someone to make the most successful start they can with their eyes wide open,” she said.
Outside roots
While many banks are competing for area residents’ business, independent community banks have been dwindling since the mid-1980s. The trend started after the state abolished so-called “home rule” regulations preventing banks from expanding beyond their home counties.
Dozens of long-established Northwest Indiana community banking names disappeared, many absorbed by downstate and out-of-state banks.
First Merchants Bank, a Muncie-based bank and one of the largest with headquarters in Indiana, moved into the area a decade ago. It has 106 offices across Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, and holds $18 billion in assets.
Rene Martin, First Merchants vice president and relationship manager in the Valparaiso location, started her banking career at the former Gainer Bank in Merrillville.
She said First Merchants may be larger than the average community bank, but it still performs like one, reinvesting depositors’ funds back into local cities and towns.
She said one success story is helping Aberdeen Manor in Valparaiso expand. The longtime Valparaiso venue for weddings, corporate events and parties purchased another Porter County destination, Anderson’s Winery, in 2018. The bank also helped with the ownership succession from Denna Fyock to her daughter, Megan Wiesjahn.
Illinois-based Wintrust Bank also is tapping into the Northwest Indiana market. It recently opened a Crown Point branch to go along with one in Dyer.
CEO Timothy Crane said the bank is committed to the communities in which it serves.
“Wintrust will maintain its deep commitment to the communities in which we operate, including philanthropic support of a wide variety of nonprofit organizations as well as an exemplary track record of helping meet the banking needs of underserved communities,” Crane said in a press release.
And it works the other way also. Centier Bank expanded into the greater Indianapolis market with two locations just this year, with plans for two more next year.
Associates at the new branch plan to continue the bank’s focus on building community.
“We are grateful for the connections fostered between our staff and the community,” said Troy Kafka, Centier Bank’s greater Indianapolis market president, in a press release. “These relationships enable us to provide top-tier support while engaging the communities where our associates live and work.”
Michigan City-based Horizon Bank also has expanded beyond its Indiana roots. The bank, which was founded in 1873, has $7.9 million in assets.
It acquired 14 TCF National Bank branches in Michigan in 2021.
But its core mission to build relationships in the communities it serves has stayed the same.
“Horizon Bank gives back to the communities we serve in many ways,” said John Freyek, Horizon’s market president of Lake County, in a press release.
Recent donations include $25,000 for scholarships for Purdue University Northwest students.
Nonprofit benefits
Credit unions — not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their depositors — operate more than 100 branches in Northwest Indiana and South Bend.
Indiana Credit Union League President John McKenzie said statewide credit unions hold $45.2 billion in assets and $6.3 billion in commercial loans and serve more than 2.8 million Hoosiers often at lower costs.
One of the larger local institutions is Tech Credit Union of Crown Point. It was founded in 1936 to serve steel mill employees. It holds $535 million in total assets and has 38,000 members.
“We have roughly 200 industrial and business clients, traditional commercial real estate transactions and construction trades,” said Don McCormick, Tech’s vice president for commercial lending. “Our average commercial member is a family-owned business.”
McCormick said his career has spanned 29 years.
“My background is in finance,” he said. “I have an MBA, but there is no coursework in commercial banking. I learn something new on the job every day. You have to have excellent communication skills. Listening is important.”
Mitch Gaffigan, vice president of member business services at Purdue Federal Credit Union, said members are more than customers.
“The credit union representative and the small business owner will have mutual objectives, and the outcome will not be discolored by shareholders’ objectives but only focused on the best interest of the credit union member,” he said.
Purdue Federal Credit Union was founded in 1969 at the West LaFayette campus of Purdue University. It now has more than 100,000 members and assets of about $1.9 million. He said the credit union offers the same SBA services as larger banks.
“Having worked for a regional bank in the past, I see first-hand that our environment differs because it is not about fee generation,” he said. “It is focused on delivering the best banking experience, including great treasury management and deposit solutions that are in the members’ best interest.”
Credit unions also are committed to giving back to their communities. Goshen-based Interra Credit Union, which was chartered in 1932 and has $1.7 billion in assets, saw a record-breaking year for its annual holiday giving campaign. It raised more than $47,000 that benefited 43 nonprofit agencies.
“Our staff continues to amaze me,” said Amy Sink, chief executive officer, in a press release. “As a part of Interra’s commitment to ‘Do Well To Do Good,’ nothing makes me happier than to see our staff come together for the greater good of this community.”
Looking out for community
McCormick said bankers sometimes must play detective, with a suspicious eye on atypical transactions that might cheat customers.
“You have elder fraud, romance scams, foreign lottery scams and wire scams people still fall for,” he said. “We make sure we are asking the right questions of members wanting to wire money, to make sure it’s not to someone claiming have an inheritance or prize money waiting for our members or someone claiming to be a family member who has been incarcerated.”
He said one of the most prevalent scams these days is intercepting checks in the mail — “washing” or deleting the dollar amount and its receiver’s name and then making it out to the scammer for a higher amount.
He said a business customer recently spotted a fraudulent electronic deduction from his account.
“We looked into and credited their account before the office opened that day,” he said.
Bankers also step up in a crisis.
Duncan said that the 2020 pandemic kept him and other Peoples bankers working overtime, helping local merchants keep their employees paid during government shutdowns.
He said he walked business owners through the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided federal government subsidized low-interest loans. He said the breakneck demand for economic relief had him and other Peoples bankers working overtime.
“I had to cancel a family vacation to keep up with the work,” he said.
The Indiana Bankers Association reported in 2020 that banks statewide arranged more than 70,000 PPP loans worth nearly $10 billion.
McCormick said bankers have an obligation, not only to their customers and bottom lines, but also the community at large.
“We have staff sit on boards for a humane society, Meals on Wheels, Rotary and Kawanis and other service organizations,” he said.
Duncan is a member of the Crown Point Rotary and a past president on the Community Foundation Board.
The Community First Committee of Peoples Bank collected $44,000 from fundraisers their bank staff throw and matching funds from the bank that are donated to nonprofit organizations.
Other banks make volunteering a part of the company culture. Houck of Centier said the bank is a premier sponsor of the Regional Care Group, a provider for mental health and social services. It is one of many organizations the bank supports.
“We don’t just donate money, we put our volunteer work behind what we do because it’s so critical to our community bank,” Houck said.
Read more stories from the current issue of Northwest Indiana Business Magazine.
