The Menomonee Falls-based bank will open a new full service branch at 12960 W. Bluemound Rd. early next year.
Menomonee Falls-based Securant Bank & Trust will open a new 3,289-square-foot branch at 12960 W. Bluemound Road in Elm Grove in February. The bank, formerly known as Milwaukee Western Bank and MW Bank, is opening in Elm Grove because of its proximity to I-94, other eastern Waukesha County communities such as Brookfield and New Berlin and Western Milwaukee County, said David Davis, president and CEO.
"This gets us in the center and core of businesses in the city and is accessible to the communities in which we would hope to gather clients for our wealth management and trust services, which will be housed there with our commercial lending group," Davis said. Securant launched its wealth management and trust services divisions earlier this year. The Elm Grove branch, when it opens, will be Securant’s fifth and will house nine new employees.
In April, the bank opened a new branch in Slinger, where it has seen dramatic growth. "The Slinger branch was (projected) to be profitable by June of 2009," Davis said. "It was profitable in August. It is 525 percent ahead of its loan production goal and 1,100 percent ahead of its deposit growth."
Securant’s Slinger branch has generated about $10 million in loans and more than $5.5 million in deposits, Davis said. The bank does little to no residential mortgages, focusing on commercial banking and loans.
It will continue to look for other branch locations where it can find the right employees and numbers of potential clients, Davis said.
"We grow where we can find the right people, the talent to provide the kind of service levels that we want to provide, and the markets that we want to be in," he said. "We’re putting our banks today in a strategic focus."
Davis led a group of investors in purchasing the bank about one year ago. Although the bank was founded in 1914 and has a lengthy history, its focus on commercial clients has allowed it to remain relatively unscathed by the fallout stemming from the housing crisis, Davis said.
"The commercial community in Milwaukee is doing wonderful, and obviously their success is our success," he said. "We’re not participating in what’s going on outside (the credit crunch and slowdown). Things are OK."
