![]() ![]() Snohomish County is attractive because it’s a growing county, but it also has lots of what Harrison says are great small communities. Jacobson worked for Horizon Bank, which also was based in Bellingham, before joining First Financial in 2013.įirst Financial is looking to continue to add branches and wants to be in communities in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties. She worked for Peoples Bank in Bellingham before joining First Financial in 2014. Both she and Jacobson are familiar with Snohomish County. Harrison is leading the effort to build the branch system. “We are publicly traded, and with that comes responsibilities to grow earnings every year to meet the shareholder expectations,” Jacobson said. Now the bank is pursuing its intention to grow. The $225 million raised by going public allowed the bank to weather the downturn. The bank was looking to grow when it went public in 2007. “Depending on your familiarity with banking structures, we were at that time what is lovingly referred to as an old-time thrift model,” Harrison said. It grew to a financial institution with more than $1 billion in assets with just the single headquarters in Renton. The bank has been around for decades, opening in 1923. “That really gave our board of directors the confidence that we should continue up there.” “Mill Creek and Edmonds, those were our first two offices and we are very pleased with those,” Jacobson said. The bank is one of the smallest in the county in terms of deposits, according to an FDIC report, although that was before the addition of the four branches. This summer, the bank purchased four branches from Opus Bank, including three in Snohomish County - one in Smokey Point-Arlington, another in Snohomish-Clearview and the last in Lake Stevens. We’ll go over, with an iPad, things such as how do you sign onto online banking.”įirst Financial opened its first branch in Snohomish County in Mill Creek in 2015 and added another in Edmonds in 2016. ![]() “We issue debit cards there and then we show you how to actually activate the card and use it. “They’re a little bit more like an Apple store than a bank,” Harrison said. ![]()
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