Illinois National Bank has opened its first, full-service branch in the Bloomington-Normal community at the corner of East Washington and Prospect Road.
INB has had a loan office in Bloomington since 2012. “The loan office helped us develop a core group of customers who were asking us to provide other banking services in the area,” says Sarah Phalen, INB President and CEO. A full-service branch allows the bank to offer savings and checking accounts, as well as safe deposit boxes and the full complement of banking services you’d expect from a bank.
“With that said,” says Phalen, “INB isn’t a typical bank. Our tagline is, ‘We Make Banking Easy,’ and we stand behind that in everything we do. For example, we constantly review our mortgage loan process to assure everyone gets into their new home in as few days as possible. We routinely update our online banking platform, assuring banking isn’t a chore and is, instead, something our clients can handle 24-7.”
Phalen continues: “While we will have just a single facility in Bloomington, we have ATMs all over the area thanks to the MoneyPass network. Our customers can use all of the ATMs in the network for free.” She says this is the type of convenience you might not expect from a community bank.
Locally owned and based in Springfield, INB is a community bank, always putting the needs of the community in the forefront. Phalen explains: “When we established the bank in 1999, we did it because we didn’t like what was happening in the banking industry.” At the time, many community banks were being bought up by large banks. At first, people thought this was great because the big banks offered technology and a depth of service that most community banks didn’t at the time. “We opened a new kind of community bank . . . one with both innovative technology and services with a personal touch,” she says. Phalen is proud of the fact that INB employees know their customers by name and take the time to chat with business partner’s about their ever-changing situations.
INB is headquartered two blocks from the Illinois State Capitol. “We chose this location so we could easily serve city, county and state municipalities,” explains Phalen who was part of the bank’s original founding team. Today, the bank’s Remittance Processing Center -- the largest remittance processing center in the state outside of the Chicago area -- handles payment collection for municipalities and businesses. INB processes more than 6 million transactions annually, depositing more than $5 billion into governmental and business accounts.
With the addition of the Bloomington-Normal branch, INB operates 13 branches in Central Illinois and a loan office in Champaign. INB provides a full range of traditional banking services to individuals and businesses, including commercial and retail banking, trust and brokerage, cash management, Internet banking and remittance processing.