Huntingdon Valley Bank
How we helped a community bank find success through joy.
In 2013, Huntingdon Valley Bank (HVB) was a small, six-branch community bank struggling to compete with larger banks in two higher income counties north of Philadelphia. The new CEO, Travis Thompson, had a vision to build a culture of innovation that would embrace the changes necessary to compete in the fast-changing, retail banking industry. Thompson hired Princeton Partners to engineer a brand transformation that would inspire the organization to create loyal customers and advocates through superior levels of service.
Huntingdon Valley Bank
Financial Services
“The team at Princeton Partners played a critical role in helping us articulate our values and purpose. The brand they created has transformed HVB’s culture and has really resonated with customers.”
INSIGHT
Princeton Partners discovered that HVB’s mortgage business was already achieving exceptional customer satisfaction by delivering “the perfect closing” to every customer. HVB had strong internal processes but needed employees to embrace new technology and use their ingenuity to create exceptional customer experiences. Princeton Partners conducted mini-discovery sessions with customer-facing and support staff, middle managers, and leadership to reveal the key aspirations, strengths, and opportunities that could be leveraged to accelerate success. Through our UBI Branding Process, we articulated the bank’s purpose: to bring joy to customers through banking. We also worked with the leadership team to define and communicate the core values that would help the bank meet that goal.
SOLUTION
We recommended that HVB go to market as “The Better Experience Bank” with a new logo, website, signage, collateral and inspirational employee handbooks. Our subsequent marketing campaign initiatives leveraged this positioning and created new levels of awareness and growth in deposits.
RESULTS
The leadership team credits the new branding with helping them re-energize the organization, excite investors, and set a foundation for solid growth. HVB earned recognition as the best bank in its home counties and also became one of the fastest growing banks in the nation over the next six years, doubling its assets without acquisitions.
