by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
With a banking institution on nearly every corner, Downtown may seem an unlikely location for a brand new bank.
For Bank of North Florida, which opened Monday in the Bank of America Tower Annex building soon to be named Bank of North Florida Building, Downtown is the ideal place for a new bank to call home.
“This is our location by design,” said bank president and CEO Stewart Baker. “We wanted to be in Downtown Jacksonville because it’s the center of activity on the First Coast.”
The parent company for BNF is the Florida Bank Group, headquartered in Tampa, that also operates the Bank of St. Petersburg through seven branches. The group raised $20 million as part of a $60 million fundraiser earlier this year to open BNF as their first enterprise outside the Tampa Bay area.
While some may wonder if neighboring banks – like Wachovia across the street, Bank of America immediately next door and AmSouth located one block east – might provide too much competition for the new financial institution, Baker says not to worry.
“I don’t think those other banks being here makes it tougher at all,” he said. “I’ve been here for twenty-something years so I have a lot of connections in town. We consciously decided to be here and we felt that it (Jacksonville) was a great hub from which to expand. I think we can do a better job than all of those other financial institutions.”
Tom Gibbs, chairman of the board for BNF, agrees.
“We’re here for the same reasons those other banks are here,” he said.
Some of the reasoning behind the bank’s confidence is in their unique approach to customers, said Gibbs.
The bank spans two floors of the building at 135 W. Bay Street. The first floor of the building is the bank’s main branch location while the fifth floor is dedicated to the bank’s support operations. It has 15 employees including private bankers, commercial bankers, real estate specialists and tellers. Among traditional bank services and account types, BNF also offers some more “individualized type” accounts like the “WOW account” which is a checking account for individuals that pays 5.03 percent interest and requires a $50,000 minimum balance.
“As far as we know,” said Baker, “there is not another checking account out there like that.”
Another unique service that BNF offers to clients is the ability to make check deposits from their home or office using a check authorizing device that instantly credits funds to their account. According to Baker, this is just one more way that the bank is hoping to customize service for its clients. Baker said BNF plans to open 4-5 branches during the next three years.