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.”