“The difference is just the whole community banking concept,” said Shon Myers, the bank’s president and CEO since 2000. “For every dollar deposited here, it gives us dollars to lend out here.”
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
In addition, FM Bank stays committed to the community via sponsorships of local tee-ball, basketball and soccer teams, projects such as murals on the side of the Plaza Theatre. “When you put all of that together, it’s a ... circle of economic growth that just really ... everybody wins,” he said.
The bank’s 1923 opening occurred when five local businessman decided they needed a local community bank, Myers said.
“They raised they sold 300 shares of stock at $100 each, and so they raised $30,000 in stock to create the ban,” he said. “Today, it takes about $30 million to open a bank. Quite the difference.”
Myers said he joined in 2001, the bank had $75 million in assets and employed 25 people in three offices. Today, it sits at nearly $300 million in assets and employs 43.
“We’ve had a good bit of growth just in what I would call somewhat of a short time,” he said “When I started, we had one internet line in to an AOL account. That blows my mind. Now we have mobile apps with check deposit, everything like everybody else does.”
Myers said the bank is locally owned, with fewer than 400 Dayton area residents who own it’s stock, none of them owning more than 5%, he said. It continues to make a foothold in small business lending, “where most of our growth significant growth comes from,” Myers said.
The bank did about $80 million in new loans this year, the majority of which was to small businesses.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Centerville-based Carr Insurance Agency was founded by Glen Carr in 1975 and has locations in Beavercreek and Louisville, Kentucky. Carr’s son, Greg, the agency’s current owner and president, said he switched to FM Bank in 2012.
“I was working with three other banking institutions at the time during an acquisition and it was just kind of stuck in underwriting, a very lengthy process,” Carr said. “Someone had referred me to (chief lending officer) Clint Morton over at Farmers & Merchants and really having had a discussion with him and kind of his approach to things, they were able to get me a term sheet on the acquisition within probably two weeks, and I was still providing other banking institutions information for underwriting of that acquisition.”
Approachability and accessibility are what have kept the agency banking with FM Bank, he said.
“There’s always been consistent relationships and the ability for them to be able to locally underwrite and do it in a timely manner and have products that would meet my needs,” Carr said.
To celebrate its 100th anniversary, FM Bank’s board of directors approved a $100,000 donation to the Miamisburg Community Foundation to sponsor the new playground in Riverfront Park, which is being renovated by the city of Miamisburg, the home of the bank’s headquarters.
“It’s just so connected to where we are and what we’re about and how we were founded,” he said. “It just felt like the right thing to do.”
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
FM BANK TIMELINE:
- Dec. 21, 1923: Farmers & Merchants Bank opens in the A.R. Stocker Building at 59 S. Main Street in downtown Miamisburg.
- 1928: The bank relocates to 20 East Central Ave. on Miamisburg’s Market Square.
- 1954: FM Bank moves again to a newly constructed building at 41 S. First St. in Miamisburg, the location it still occupies.
- 1978: The bank builds and opens a full-service branch at 3235 Alex-Bell Road in West Carrollton
- 2006: Germantown branch opens at 2367 Beechwood Drive
- 2016: New Lebanon branch opens inside of Groceryland at 510 W. Main St before moving into a full-service location in early 2022 at 47 W. Main St.
- 2022: Springboro branch opens at 720 Gardner Road
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