- Key insight: The new Bank419 name ties into the company’s wider regional ambitions.
- Expert quote: “We needed a name to reflect our commitment to all of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, not just one town” — CEO Kathleen Fischer
- Why It Matters: Banks that successfully execute name changes often enjoy accelerated growth, according to Juliet D’Ambrosio, the chief experience officer at the consulting firm Adrenaline.
A small Northwest Ohio community bank is the latest lender to unveil a new brand identity, invoking the local area code to signal its commitment to the region.
After 81 years as Metamora State Bank, the $98 million-asset institution will go forward as Bank419.
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Bank419 was founded in Metamora, Ohio, which is located near Toledo, in 1944. Since then, however, the company has widened its footprint, adding branches in the nearby communities of Sylvania and Maumee.
“We needed a name to reflect our commitment to all of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, not just one town,” CEO Kathleen Fischer said Monday during a
“As we continue to grow and serve more people and more communities, we felt this was the right time to make a change,” Fischer said.
Juliet D’Ambrosio, chief experience officer at Adrenaline, an Atlanta-based consulting firm that has advised a number of banks, but not Metamora State Bank, on branding issues, believes the Ohio bank ran into a situation that scores of other established community banks have previously faced. The name that fit like a well-tailored suit at inception had become limiting as time passed, and as the institution grew.
“They want to stay loud and proud about the region, but be able to move beyond that hyper-local name,” D”Ambrosio told American Banker.
Other small banks that have rebranded recently include the former First Commercial Bank in Jackson, Mississippi, which in August changed its name to Story Financial Partners. In a press release, President and CEO Curt Gabardi called the updated moniker “a bold and distinctive new name reflective of the comprehensive financial advice and counsel we provide.”
Similarly, in November, the $960 million-asset Bank of Charles Town in Charles Town, West Virginia, became Potomac Bank. Chairman Keith Berkeley described the new name in a press release as “a reflection of who we’ve become, the relationships we’ve nurtured, and the future we’re building together.”
Rebranding, when executed well, does more than freshen a bank’s identity, according to D’Ambrosio. In many cases, it accelerates growth through more effective marketing and customer acquisition.
Now, Bank419 is hoping to capitalize.
“What they’ve done here is shift from kind of a heritage play to an ambition play,” D’Ambrosio said. “It’s not about walking away from their 80 years of [brand] equity. It really is about signaling, `We’re here, we’re going to grow.'”
The number 419, beyond being an area code connected to Northwest Ohio, is also linked to a well-known scam, often associated with fraudsters from Nigeria, where callers seek to entice potential victims to wire money with the promise of receiving a rich payout from a supposed inheritance or lottery prize.
But scams appear to have been the farthest thing from Bank419’s thinking as it settled on a new identity. Indeed, Fischer described the name as “intentionally simple and clear and rooted here in Northwest Ohio.”
In an added benefit, bank names built around numbers typically prove much easier to trademark, according to D’Ambrosio.
“Any word that you or I could think of, as well as half of the made-up words that you or I could dream up, are already owned,” D’Ambrosio said.