Metamora State Bank, a $98 million-asset community bank in the Toledo, Ohio, area, is starting the new year off with a new name: Bank419.
Kathleen Fischer, the bank’s CEO, dubbed the change “intentionally simple and clear”: It’s a callout to the region’s area code.
“We needed a name to reflect our commitment to all of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan, not just one town,” Fischer said last week in a Facebook video unveiling the fresh brand. “We needed a name that would grow with us while keeping us grounded in what matters most: this place, these people and this community.”
Metamora State Bank opened in 1944 in Metamora, then gained a second branch in nearby Sylvania in 1995, then a third in Maumee in 2019.
“Eighty years ago, local leaders opened a small bank because they believed this community deserved better. They believed in personal relationships, local decision-making, doing right by neighbors,” Fischer said. “That vision hasn’t changed. It’s just getting a new name.”
Bank leadership considered a name change for about two years and said other, more traditional bank names had already been taken or didn’t suit the business. The Bank419 moniker allows the bank to “sink into our roots,” Fischer told The (Toledo) Blade.
“No business strategies are going to change. We are exactly who we are, and we’ll always be that in the future,” Fischer told the publication. “I feel [the new name] doesn’t limit us, because that’s where we came from — we started in 419 and that’s where we’re successful.”
Juliet D'Ambrosio, chief experience officer at Atlanta-based consulting firm Adrenaline, called the rebranding a “shift from kind of a heritage play to an ambition play.”
“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,’” D’Ambrosio told American Banker. “They want to stay loud and proud about the region, but be able to move beyond that hyper-local name.”
The bank has taken a new online domain name, 419.bank – where a banner now reads: “SAME BANK. NEW NAME. Metamora State Bank is now Bank 419!” A customer testimonial on the website prominently features the new name.
Signage and other materials will transition to the rebrand “pretty quickly,” Fischer said.
“We’re celebrating how far we’ve come – honoring our legacy while embracing our future,” she said.
