South Bend's 1st Source Bank follows customers south and opens branch in Florida

The new banking center, the institution’s first outside of Indiana or Michigan, opened on the seventh floor of the Spector Building in downtown Sarasota on April 10.

“It is a regular branch, but not in a traditional sense with a drive-through and teller windows,” said Chris Strafford, senior vice president of wealth advisory services for the South Bend-based bank.

The center accepts walk-in customers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, Strafford said, but otherwise functions as a private banking hub, with two private bankers — one from South Bend and one from Florida — on staff.

“Deposits, loans — a lot of that we go out to the customer to service them,” Strafford said. “We make ourselves available to them at their place of business or at their home.”

The center also solves a long-standing problem for 1st Source: its inability to establish trusts in the state, which has a friendlier tax policy for trusts than Indiana.