A community bank is a bank that is tied closely to their community. When people want to borrow money, generally the bank likes to know who they are and establish a relationship with the person. The people who work at community banks are involved in organizations and groups throughout the community and are well known. Westfield Bank was launched by Westfield Insurance in 2001 to provide banking services to their customers with the same dedication and commitment the insurance company had. The bank quickly grew beyond the insurance customers and is now the 9th largest bank in the state of Ohio. With seven branches in Northeast Ohio, nine ATM locations, a strong online presence, Operations Center in Seville, and corporate offices in Westfield Center, the future looks very bright for this strong community bank!

View Westfield Bank’s Timeline Here

In Ohio, banking regulations were originally set up by county. So if you had an account with a Westfield Bank branch in Medina County, it was technically a different bank than a Westfield Bank in Summit County. Because of this, Ohio is what we call “overbanked” which means there are A LOT more banks here than in other states. While competition is always good, we want to be able to keep our costs down and marketing can be a big expense.

We are also in an interesting time in terms of interest rates. When someone deposits money in any bank, that money is then loaned to other people to build houses, start or grow businesses, and make their dreams come true. To use people’s money, we pay them “interest” or a percentage of the money they put in the bank. Then the people borrowing the money pay a percentage of the money they borrow in interest. So we pay out money to people who deposit money, and make money on people who borrow. The federal government sets the interest rate we can go up to and in the last few years it has been VERY low. For example, in 2022 we paid out 9 million dollars in interest. In 2023, we paid 45 million on almost the same amount of deposits.

Our final big challenge right now is cyber security and regulation. Lots of hackers are trying to get people’s banking information. We work very hard to prevent any problems and the government puts lots of regulations on banks to help ensure everyone’s money is safe. The hard part is we have to do both technology changes to meet the challenges of cyber attacks and regulation changes, but we also have to educate our employees and customers. If customers carry their account information and passwords, or write an ATM code on their card, we have to help them fix things when they get compromised. It is a real problem.

Because we were founded to help Westfield Insurance customers, we are actually in 37 states. That also happens as businesses grow and expand and people move around the company but want to stay with the bank. Our headquarters and the bulk of our customer base is in Northeast Ohio. 

Banks are notoriously paper-heavy. We have made a lot of efforts to cut down on paper and do as much electronically as possible. Our workforce is hybrid meaning many of our associates work from home some part of each week, cutting down on commuting pollution. From the bank’s inception we have always stressed our technology and that has cut down on how often customers need to come to a branch and paperwork can be sent electronically, including encouraging our customers to use digital statements vs. paper. 

We actually have a Political Action Committee employees contribute to which works with governments and elected officials to make sure the laws that are put in place don’t make things too difficult for banks. We also are part of the Ohio Bankers League and meet with elected officials regularly to hear what they are working on and to give our opinions. 

We post our positions on social media tools like LinkedIn, but our best candidates come from referrals. And our referrals come from our current employees, but also from our customers and even our competitors because our reputation is that good. 

Why do people like to work here?

We have a culture of caring about each other and our customer. Because we are a community bank, we are focused on caring about our community and the people around us which gives our associates the opportunity to be engaged in ways they care about. We have associates that serve in local government, sit on boards and committees of non-profits, and volunteer all over the region.