First Community Bank
State of the Art Management and Old Fashioned Service

Dennis Yohnka,
B2B correspondent

The “big-box” hardware and appliance outlets may have ended the era of

mom-and-pop stores. But, in Joliet, the new First Community Bank is proving that a group of local investors and employees can find their own niche in a landscape dominated by the cookie-cutter branches of the “big-box” banks.

“The money is the same everywhere,” explained Steve Morrissette, the president of this July 4, 2004 start-up. “A 20-dollar bill here is just like the one at the bank down the street. So, we knew from the beginning that the difference was going to have to be in the service, the people, the feeling that customers get when they walk in our doors.”

Those factors, combined with Will County’s healthy economic climate, led First Community Bank to two remarkable milestones in a matter of months.

First, while the typical new banking enterprise might attract 75 to 250 stockholders, Morrissette is pleased to note that his organization boasts more than 400 local stockholders. Secondly, while the rule of thumb projects that a start-up bank will top $125 million in assets somewhere around its fifth anniversary - First Community Bank surpassed the $150-million mark in little more than 15 months.

“I’ve lived in this area my entire life, and I think the people here have some strong values,” Morrissette explained. “They want good schools and good health care. They want strong financial institutions. And they want them to be run by local people who care about this area and the people they serve.”

To that end, First Community began as a gathering of local men and women from a wide range of professional fields. The legal world, the auto industry, construction, insurance and health care are among the domains represented on the bank’s board of directors. The founding members included Frank Turk Jr., Mark Stofan, Bob Sohol, Paul Pawlak, John Manner, Patti Lambrecht, Pat Graham, Rex Easton, Mike Hansen, Roger D’Orozio, John Dollinger, Terry D’Arcy, Mary Margaret Cowhey, George Barr and Morrissette.

A second very popular stock offering (for $12.5 million) ended Nov. 18. The bank reports that all of that stock went to local families and businesses, despite interest from Chicago and California investors.

“The Chicago group is a mutual fund that invests only in new banks,” Morrissette said. “They had looked at more than 100 new banks in the last year and only 15 met their standards. We were one of them, but wanted to keep it all local.”

Another critical factor in establishing a new business entity is finding the right personnel. At First Community Bank, the task was more like assembling an all-star team. In fact, Morrissette began fielding calls from prospective employees as soon as word of the bank’s founding began to circulate.

“They wanted to be involved with banking the way it was before the financial giants came along and it seemed like we all traded in our business cards every six months or so,” Morrissette said. “In my case, I started with Joliet Federal and it became Amerifed, then NBD, then First Chicago, and then Bank One - which is now Chase JP Morgan.

“So, today, I think we have a great team of experienced professionals, but theses are two things I like to hear.”

“First, it’s great when the clients tell me they’ve been treated wonderfully. Heck, I even got a hug the other day. Secondly, I like to hear our employees’ former coworkers telling me how happy their friends are working here.”

Meanwhile, even the décor within First Community is a part of the business strategy. Oh, there are modern flat-screen TVs offering financial news and other distractions for a customer’s brief wait. But the more dominant feature is the collection of framed scenes of Joliet history. Despite the new look of this Georgian-style brick structure at the intersection of Infantry Drive and Black Road, those photos help create an incredible sense of community roots.

“The people look at these pictures and tell me ‘That’s my uncle there with the old steam tractors,’ or ‘That’s my grandfather in 1934.’  So, the walls have become sort of a community diary,” Morrissette said.

On the other side of those walls, the history lesson is over. There is no archive of antiquated banking practices back there. First Community is getting positive reviews, for example, for its secure, user-friendly internet banking services. Local snowbirds are logging on and moving funds, paying bills and checking balances with the click of a computer key.

That mix of old-fashioned personal attention and state-of-the-art management techniques is attracting a unique mix of customers – businesses and individuals who are showing up in the bank’s newspaper testimonials.

“It definitely makes my job more interesting,” Morrissette added with a smile. “One minute I might be talking with a man rehabbing one of the great old City Center buildings and the next I might be helping