North Milwaukee State Bank, the oldest minority-owned bank in Milwaukee, has rebranded itself NMSBank and hired two new senior level executives.
Earlier this year, the bank named Erbert Johnson its president and chief executive officer and Peter Schumacher its chief financial officer.
Prior to his hire at NMSBank, Johnson served as senior vice president with Key Bank Capital Market in Cleveland. He also worked at several other financial services firms in Cleveland.
"Milwaukee is my hometown, and I’ve spent most of my career here other than my nine years in Cleveland," Johnson said. "I’ve always had a desire to take a lot of what I was learning in these huge organizations and find a way to bring that back to the community. This represents that opportunity for me."
Earlier this year, NMSBank opened a newly constructed branch at 8200 W. Brown Deer Road and remodeled its headquarters and main branch at 5630 W. Fond Du Lac Avenue. It also began offering mutual funds, insurance products and investment advice through a partnership with ING Financial, Johnson said.
"That’s a step in the wealth management and private banking direction," he said. "I’m also a CPA and licensed broker… and because of that skill set, we’ve started doing some financial advisor work."
NMSBank also has bolstered its commercial and small business banking services. The bank formerly had one employee working in the commercial lending area – it now has four.
"We’ve seen some of the pullback at the larger organizations," Johnson said. "Community banking has an opportunity to step up and serve some of these guys that are having difficulty with access (to capital). We can fill that gap for them."
For more information, visit www.nmsbank.com.
