Another new banking name entered the Chattanooga market this week when the Ooltewah-based Community Trust & Banking Co. changed its name to Millennium Bank.
Bank President Mike Haskew said the new name was adopted to help give the 17-year-old bank a more distinctive identity and help highlight its appeal to all age groups, including younger Millennial customers, as it focuses on growing small and mid-sized businesses.
"The feeling of our board of directors was that Community Trust was a very generic name that didn't contribute a lot to top-of-mind awareness, so we decided to rebrand the bank with a new name and a fresh look to point ourselves in a forward looking direction to help get our name out there a bit more forcibly," Haskew said Friday. "I think the Millennium name gives the public a sense of a progressive institution that is on the leading edge of technology."
With mergers and sales last year by four other community banks in Chattanooga (FSG, CapitalMark, Northwest Georgia and Cornerstone), Millennium is one of the few locally owned and headquartered banks left in Hamilton County.
"We think that gives us a unique position in the marketplace to deliver customer service on a timely basis with people that you know," Haskew said. "Coming out of the recession, we're seeing a lot of opportunities with customers who were disenfranchised or displaced that certainly fit in our wheelhouse."
Last year, Community Trust boosted its earnings by more than 34 percent to $1.5 million in 2015 - the fourth consecutive year of profitability for the Ooltewah bank after it lost more than $5.8 million during the Great Recession and its aftermath form 2008 to 2011, according to financial filings with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
In 2010, Chattanooga developer Byron Defoor acquired a majority ownership of the bank.
At the end of 2015, the bank reported assets of $139.4 million, up $11.2 million from the previous year. Millennium Bank operates two offices in Ooltewah and others in East Brainerd and Hixson. At the end of last year, the bank had 33 employees.
Last year, the FDIC listed Community Trust was the 13th biggest of the 28 banks operating in metropolitan Chattanooga.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or at 423-757-6340.