Centra Bank opening of $1.8 million office evidence of growth
Right now, it’s number two. “But we will be number one in the marketplace,’ Chris Cluss, chairman of the Centra Bank, Fayette County board, promised.
Is that a realistic goal? With a two-year presence in Fayette County, Centra Bank has already noted a number of milestones. Locally, the bank doubled its loan portfolio ($107 million) and increased deposits by 25 percent to $275 million. This week, the financial company opened its first brand-new office, a $1.8 million brick-and-glass structure on Walnut Hill Road in South Union Township, and has announced that it is “looking at other sites’ in the county.
Nearly one year ago, Fayette County’s newest bank reached $1 billion in assets overall and achieved national recognition when it was named number 31 in Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Hot 500” for 2007, their annual ranking of “America’s top fast-growth business, and the entrepreneur’s who built them.”
Douglas J. Leech, Centra’s CEO and a Fayette County native, was inducted into the 2007 West Virginia Business Hall of Fame, established in 2001 by the West Virginia University College of Business and Economics to publicly recognize extraordinary business leaders and to establish a record of their achievement.
The bank also posted a 61 percent increase in earnings from June 2006 to June 2007. And, on June 28, 2007, the company was featured on the front page of the American Banker, the nation’s lead publication and daily resource for financial service industry professionals. The article focused on Centra’s continued growth into Maryland.
“When we started this bank, consumers and businesses voted with their feet and it validates our business philosophy,’ Leech said.
“When we started, we were cutting against the grain in the banking industry. We began in the face of a lot of banking consolidation, the Internet dot.com boom and a lot of banking was going online,’ Leech said.
“But the philosophy and idea of this bank is that we answer the telephone, we have more customer service representatives and loan officers per thousand customers than any other bank in the country and this (the milestones and listing) validates that we are doing something right,’ he added.
Leech said customers Centra Bank serves best are the lower-to-middle market companies and individuals.
Centra operates four separate markets in three states – Morgantown and Martinsburg, W. Va.; Fayette County and Hagerstown, Md. The bank has 17 banking facilities with plans to complete three additional offices this year, one of those being the new Uniontown office.
“We work in markets dominated by the large banks. Yes, we also offer Internet and online banking services. But we concentrate on customer service, giving our customers what they want. When they call us, they get to speak to a real person to give them advice and help.
“We are also a bank that talks a lot about character in making decisions, as well as looking at the ratios. In Uniontown, for example, we have a local board that makes local decisions, not some large bank board that sits in some other state.’
At the grand opening July 9 for the new Centra office in Uniontown, Leech noted that it represents “a substantial investment in this community.
“I am gratified by this, especially since I grew up about seven or eight miles from here.
“Eight years ago, we set out to create a bank based on the principles of hiring the best bankers we could find and then empowering them to make decisions locally, as well as putting the customer first.
“Part of our mission also is to give back to the community,’ Leech said. The bank donated $50,000 to Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus to support scholarships for county residents attending the local college.
Leech, who began his college education 35 years ago at Penn State Fayette and then went on to University Park, said part of Centra’s banking model and its philosophy is “placing a great deal of weight on the character (of its customers) as opposed to a score sheet. We will be a local bank with local management that will keep its decision-making close to our customers.’
Leech also credits the bank’s success to its nearly 300 employees. “We owe more to them than I can possibly express in any news release, speech or memo,” Leech said.
Leech, who is also Centra Financial Holdings’ founder, was formerly president and CEO of Huntingdon Banks West Virginia. He also served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of One Valley Bank’s Northern Division. Leech began his career as a certified public accountant with Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co. in Pittsburgh in 1976 prior to entering the West Virginia banking industry in 1980. He is an honors graduate of Penn State University.
Leech’s parents, Joe and Doris Leech, who were on hand for the grand opening of the new Uniontown office, live in Smithfield R.D. 3. “My great-grandfather, Jesse Leech, was a cashier at First National Bank,’ which preceded Smithfield State Bank in its present headquarters in Smithfield.
In Fayette County, Centra Bank has offices in Uniontown, Smithfield and now Walnut Hill Road. The new offices supplants one in the Shop ‘n Save grocery store in Fairchance where the bank will continue to operate an automated teller machine outside the store, giving customers 24-hour access.
Ed Franczyk, president and CEO of Centra Bank Fayette, said, “Fayette County residents have accepted Centra Bank with open arms and we are very appreciative. Our Walnut Hill Road is our first newly constructed office in the Uniontown area. The state-of-the-art office is in a convenient, well-traveled area. Going to the bank should be easy and enjoyable. Fayette County is the right place for us to do business.”
Members of the Fayette bank’s board of directors are: David M. Callahan, owner, Clar-Mac Sales; C. Christopher Cluss, president and CEO, O.C. Cluss Lumber; James T. Davis, attorney partner Davis & Davis; Nancy M. Decker, president, The Laurel Business Institute; Peter Gabriel, M.D.; Dr. Mallard T. George, George’s Dental Associates; William B. Kania, certified public accountant, William B. Kania & Associates; Leech, chairman, Centra Financial Holdings Inc.; William R. Smith, certified public accountant, Smith, Lewis Chess and Co.; and Fayette County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gerald R. Solomon.
For more information on Centra Bank, call 724-439-8636 or visit www.centrabank.com.