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Pennsylvania-based Northwest Bank, which has quietly been beefing up its local presence over the past three years, is preparing to open a regional office in Fishers during the second quarter.
The Fishers location will occupy 8,964 square feet in the Ellipse Building in Fishers, 11 Municipal Drive—north of East 116th Street and west of Lantern Road.
Northwest Bank, which focuses on business and commercial banking, operates 142 full-service offices and eight freestanding drive-thru facilities in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and Indiana. The company was founded in 1896, is based in the northwestern Pennsylvania city of Warren, and has $14 billion in assets.
Northwest entered Indiana in April 2020 when its holding company, Northwest Bancshares Inc., completed a merger with Muncie-based MutualFirst Financial Inc. in an all-stock deal valued at $346 million. Northwest’s Indiana presence currently covers 22 branch locations and three loan production offices in 11 counties, in markets ranging from South Bend to Bloomfield.
Northwest now has 30 employees in central Indiana, including bankers who specialize in commercial lending, treasury management, credit and portfolio management. Some of them are former MutualFirst employees, but most are new hires who came aboard after the merger, said Jennifer Gibson, Northwest’s regional president for the Indiana market.
“We’ve been kind of quietly flying under the radar,” Gibson said. “We’ve really had good luck hiring high-quality talent in central Indiana.” Gibson moved from Buffalo, New York, after the merger, currently works from Muncie and plans to move to the Fishers office when it opens.
Most of the bank’s central Indiana employees are either working from home or from a 5,662-square-foot business office in Carmel. They, too, will shift to the Fishers office, Gibson said.
When the Fishers office opens, Northwest plans to close its Carmel office at 650 E. Carmel Drive, plus a second business office at 893 E. Main St. in Greenwood, transferring those employees to the new Fishers site.
The Greenwood and Carmel locations had operated as branches under MutualFirst, Gibson said, but Northwest converted them to loan production/business offices after the merger.
Looking ahead, Gibson said Northwest has no firm plans yet for additional locations in the Indianapolis market—though the bank is always on the lookout for growth opportunities.
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I was previously with Mutual Bank, and have had nothing but issues since Northwest took over. From a large business customer for many years, stay away from Northwest.