An essential element of Columbus, Ohio-based Northwest Bank’s transformation over the past three years: Installing C-suite leaders from bigger banks. 

Northwest CEO Louis Torchio, who’s led the bank since 2022, said he’s swapped out every one of his direct reports – 13 people – over the past three years, with all having worked at “larger, more complex institutions.”  

“The goal was to be able to articulate this transformation vision and then recruit people who have been there, done that,” Torchio said in a recent interview. 

CFO Doug Schosser came from KeyBank. Chief Risk Officer Gregory Betchkal had worked at Citi and Key. Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Devin Teles-Cygnar had experience at PNC, as did Northwest’s Chief Consumer Banking and Strategy Officer Urich Bowers.

The “last missing piece” was the May hiring of Chad Ballard, who joined from Wells Fargo, as Northwest’s chief information officer, Torchio said. Ballard is tasked with evaluating the bank’s technology choices and spending with further growth in mind, Torchio said.

Those C-suite hires have been part of a broader overhaul, turning a 130-year-old thrift into a $17 billion-asset regional bank by reforming the balance sheet, boosting fee income and revamping the lender’s go-to-market efforts, Torchio said.

To execute a revamp, “you have to assemble the team that has both the acumen and the capacity to do it, and also the experience, because otherwise it could be a painful lesson,” Torchio said.

Torchio said those leaders were drawn to a bank where they could have more of an impact.

At big banks and large regionals, “real talent can get pigeonholed,” he said. “They think they have more to offer, and they think they have a broader view, which may be stifled at some other organizations.”

Operations at larger lenders can be “bureaucratic,” while at Northwest, “the 10 people that you have to get something done with are sitting right next to you on the same floor, and you can move with rapid speed,” Schosser said.

It was an attractive opportunity to Schosser and other newly hired executives, who can leverage what they learned at bigger banks, he said.

The more new C-suite leaders that joined, “the more we fed off each other and were like, ‘Hey, let's try this. Let's think about that,’” Schosser said.

At the core of Northwest’s revamp: shedding its largely consumer mortgage identity in favor of a commercial banking profile. 

It would have taken the lender a decade to do that in its geographic markets “because it's so overbanked and highly competitive,” Torchio said, so the bank in 2023 opted to build national specialty verticals including Small Business Administration lending and equipment, sports, sponsor and franchise finance.

Those new national verticals make up about one-fifth of the bank’s commercial lending business. Northwest had about $1.3 billion of commercial loans in those verticals as of the end of 2025, according to an investor presentation. 

Northwest is keenly focused on driving growth in those business lines, as well as in geographic markets that present more expansion opportunities, such as Columbus and Indianapolis, Schosser said.

In the second quarter, the bank grew commercial and industrial loans 32% year over year, to $2.8 billion, Northwest reported July 27. Average loans increased $10 million over the prior quarter, to $13.1 billion, driven partly by C&I loan growth. The bank had about $14.1 billion in deposits as of the second quarter.  

Northwest also sees room to grow its commercial real estate business within its physical footprint, Schosser said. The bank had about $3.1 billion in CRE loans as of the second quarter. 

The bank also has an appetite for another acquisition, Torchio said. Last year, Northwest acquired Williamsport, Pennsylvania-based Penns Woods Bancorp in a $270.4 million deal, adding $2.3 billion in assets. 

That purchase “meaningfully transformed” Northwest’s financial performance, Schosser said. Northwest reported $54 million in profit in the second quarter, along with a 14.9% return on tangible common equity and a 57.6% efficiency ratio. 

Penns Woods was the first deal the current leadership team has done, Schosser said, and Northwest has been able to achieve tangible book value in a shorter time frame than originally projected, showing the bank “can use M&A as a transformative lever in our growth strategy,” he said. 

Ideally, the bank would look to buy in Ohio and Indiana, “but there just aren't a lot of targets,” Torchio said, adding that executives do quarterly outreach. 

“We have to be patient,” he said. “You never know what's going to come available when, and so we keep at it and we keep our options open.”