The 94-year-old Bally Savings Bank, a small community-savings bank with a single location, will merge with Montgomery County-based Ambler Savings Bank.
The boards of trustees at both banks approved the merger Feb. 16 and will file the regulatory application this month, Gary L. Rhoads, president and CEO of Bally Savings Bank, said this morning. Regulatory approval is expected to take 60 to 120 days, Rhoads said.
“Bally is a very small savings bank with a little over $50 million in assets, and it becomes increasingly difficult to compete when you’re that small,” Rhoads said.
Bally has four employees, of which two are part-time, including Rhoads. None of the employees will lose their jobs, he said.
Rhoads said will retire after the merger is approved. He came out of retirement after working at National Penn Bank for 40 years to become president and CEO at Bally last year.
The bank offers a handful of products, such as residential mortgages and home equity loans. On the deposit side, it offers savings accounts and certificates of deposits.
The bank contains no cash on-site, no ATM and does not offer online or mobile banking. Customers who make a withdrawal at the bank are issued a check and have to cash it at another bank.
“The technology that we have is not what the current state of the art is,” Rhoads said.
“We saw the future of our bank was that if we don’t have all the technology that particularly the younger generation wants, it’s going to be much more difficult to survive as an organization,” he said.
Rhoads said it would be too costly for Bally to modernize its technology on its own, in addition to having to hire more people.
“While we have been profitable forever, we wanted to be able to make this move from a position of strength,” he said.
Rhoads said the bank’s small size also made it difficult to handle increasing regulations.
The merger with Ambler Savings Banks, which has four offices in Montgomery County, will modernize Bally’s banking services and provide more products and services to its customers, such as checking accounts, he said.
The merger will create an institution with $324 million in deposits and $395 million in assets.
“We believe the partnership between Ambler and Bally is a positive one for our customers and our employees,” Roger A. Zacharia, president and CEO of Ambler Savings Bank, said in a statement.
“Our customers will have access to a larger branch network now serving Montgomery and Berks counties. Bally customers will have access to a wider variety of consumer, digital and business banking services not currently available, as well as four additional locations. The management teams of both banks share a common commitment to community banking and to remaining a mutual savings bank owned by our depositors.”
After the merger, Bally will operate as Bally Savings Bank, a division of Ambler Savings Bank. Ambler’s closest branches are in Schwenksville and Limerick.
