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Freedom Bank of Virginia in Fairfax is rolling out a workplace banking program this month, part of a broader effort to capture more consumer deposits.
In workplace banking, a financial institution partners with an employer to offer its employees a specially tailored suite of products and services. For President and CEO Joe Thomas, Freedom@Work represents a cost-effective solution to a challenge many community banks face — raising its profile and attracting more deposits with a small branch network and a limited marketing budget.
“We’d like to launch a consumer strategy, [but] we’re at an inherent competitive disadvantage to those banks that have branches on every corner,” Thomas told American Banker.
Freedom’s challenge lay in devising “creative, resourceful, differentiating ways in which we might mobilize a consumer strategy where we don’t break the bank from a resources standpoint,” Thomas added.
The Freedom@Work product originated with an advisory board that Freedom created earlier this year. The group is composed of local business leaders whose companies are Freedom customers. Many of those firms are confronting difficulties in hiring and retaining employees, according to Thomas.
“Our advisory board CEO members are thinking, `How do I help my employees build families, secure housing, do the things to have them be stable employees?'” Thomas said. “This was perceived to be a huge potential benefit Freedom Bank can offer.”
Workplace banking “is not a new concept,” and participants in Freedom’s program will receive benefits similar to those offered by other banks, Thomas said. The perks include immediate credit for direct deposits and special rates on deposits and loans.
Freedom hopes to separate itself from the pack with a robust education component delivered by bankers at an employer’s workplace. The education program will outline Freedom@Work and offer information about a range of financial topics, including homebuying — a critical subject for consumers navigating the high-priced housing market of the Washington, D.C., area.
“The education component is absolutely part of our vision,” Thomas said. “Think of it as an open-enrollment meeting where the benefits are” spelled out.
To lead Freedom@Work, the $1.1 billion-asset bank has hired Nohman Ishaq, who headed up a similar initiative at Herndon, Virginia-based Northwest Credit Union.
Ishaq, who served as vice president of retail business development and corporate partnership at the $4.2 billion-asset Northwest, “is uniquely qualified to help us design and implement this program,” Thomas told American Banker.
Founded in 2001, Freedom operates five branches spread across western Fairfax and Prince William counties. The company reported first-quarter net income totaling $2 million, up more than 70% from the same period in 2024. Deposits, which totaled $911 million on March 31, emerged as a potential sore point, with the year-over-year increase limited to a modest 0.15%.
The consumer strategy represents an attempt by Freedom to widen its deposit-gathering scope beyond its roots in commercial and small-business banking.
“Continuing to grow core deposits is a strategic initiative we’ve increasingly focused on,” Thomas said. “In particular, developing strategies that enable us to grow our consumer franchise and our consumer core deposits has become very critical from a funding as well as a cost standpoint.”
A sounding board
Freedom unveiled its advisory board in February. The panel includes leaders from eight local nonprofits and small businesses. Thomas said the group has demonstrated its worth as a source of insights and market advice.
“We’d like to think our competitive differentiation is understanding our customer, being super-responsive, bringing products the customer needs,” Thomas said. “To have that voice of the customer talking to our executive management team, giving us their insights from their experience banking with us, the challenges they face in their own business. … It’s proven to be quite valuable.”
Freedom’s experience stands as a “perfect example” of the benefits a community bank can reap from having an advisory board, according to Carey Ransom, managing director at BankTech Ventures in Newport Beach, California. While larger banks also have advisory boards, the panels work best at Main Street banks “where [they] can be more centrally run around key focus areas,” Ransom said.
Companies in a number of fields, not just banking, have used customer advisory boards as proving grounds for potential director candidates, and as sounding boards for ideas and insights.
“People will use a customer advisory board type of model as a way to do some amount of business development, some amount of aligned strategic interest and also as a way to ensure you’re not continuing to innovate and iterate in a vacuum, you’re actually listening to the people you exist to try to serve,” Ransom said.