BY Sarah smith
ssmith@parkrapidsenterprise.com
Park Rapids’ newest bank will be called Northview if a sale of State Bank is approved by regulators.
Other than that, not much should change, said Northview president Ron Carlson.
“We’ve done this several times in the last 10 years,” he said of branch acquisitions.
Northview Bank started in Finlayson in 1908 and gradually acquired other facilities to add to the family, Carlson said.
In the mid-1990s the facility added Cromwell, then Floodwood, then Grand Rapids, then Deer River, then Sandstone in 2011.
When Northview learned State Bank was up for sale, it decided to increase its reach west.
“There’s such a difficult regulatory environment for small banks,” Carlson said. Growing institutions have the power and funds to bring in experience to compete in the marketplace, he added.
State Bank will be the largest acquisition Northview has ever embarked on.
State Bank President “Marty Peterson will be retiring, and Sue Smythe will be leaving after the acquisition,” Carlson said.
“But we expect everyone else to stay,” he said. “We don’t plan to add any more people.”
Because Northview has “done this several times, there will be very little change for the customers,” Carlson assured the town.
One advantage is that 11 new locations east of Park Rapids will be accessible to State Bank customers.
As the merger nears, State Bank customers will get letters explaining the procedure. “Customers can use the same checks, the same account numbers; loan terms will be the same,” Carlson explained.
And Northview will now offer mobile banking, via I phones and tablets in which customers can remotely deposit checks, Carlson said.
“That’s been popular with our rural customers,” he said.
Customers can photograph a check with their phone and deposit it that way, he added.
“I do want to emphasize that there has been no approval yet” from the state or FDIC, he said, but he isn’t anticipating any problems.
The Smythe family has owned State Bank through five generations, for the past 113 years.
Bruce Pogatchnik is the CEO of Northview Bank. “The Pogatchnik family are the majority owners of Finlayson Bancshares, a bank holding company that owns Northview Bank and also First Independent Bank of Russell, Minnesota, located in the southwest corner of Minnesota,” Carlson said.
