EATON — Twin Valley Bank held an open house and ribbon cutting for its new Eaton branch on Friday, June 16.
Twin Valley Bank has been open since 1888, with their main branch in West Alexandria and another in Gratis. The Eaton branch is the newest addition.
The Eaton branch had its soft opening on March 13 and according to Branch Manager Jamie Gilven, business has been great.
“We’ve been busy,” she said. “We’ve been getting new customers, more faces in here, which is what we wanted. The people, the community here, seem to like it. We’re hoping that we bring in more customers with the grand opening. We thrive working for the community, as a locally owned bank. We work with board members and the community all the time.
“We just wanted to get our name out there, this is our third branch that we’ve opened,” Gilven added. “Main branch is in West Alexandria and then we have a branch in Gratis. We just wanted to go ahead and try to get our name out there and become more local around surrounding areas. We figured this would be a good place to go ahead and open a new branch.”
CEO Brian Shera added, “We thought there was an opportunity in Eaton to bring our style of banking, our brand of banking. We’re a local independent bank, we’re actually the only local independent bank that is still headquartered in Preble County. Everyone else is headquartered somewhere else. We just felt like we offer the type of service that customers are craving and are not getting. We may be a little bit biased, but we think we do it better than anybody else.
“We are the community,” Shera said. “We’re local, we’re independent. We not only work here, but we live here. Our board of directors works and lives in Preble County. The majority of our share holders work and live in Preble County. We have no other offices, other than offices located in Preble County. We needed to get into Eaton, because of the population density and again because we felt it would be a good move for the community and the bank.
“The Eaton branch was a big move for Twin Valley Bank, because we have not purchased a branch or built a branch in probably 50 years. It took a lot of planning and a lot of time,” Shera said. “The community has accepted us, we’ve had lots of customers, who come and open accounts and open loans with us.”
The open house isn’t the only way Twin Valley Bank is seeking to reach out to the community. According to Gilven, the deals will continue throughout the rest of 2017.
“We will be running a quarter percent special from today until the end of the year, on CDs and IRAs,” Gilven said. “We’ll also be running a quarter percent off on most of our loans here, which they can come in and talk to us about as well.”
The Eaton Twin Valley Bank branch is located at 251 W. Washington Jackson Rd. and can be reached at 937-336-5288.
