Associated Bank joins forces with American National Bank

WISCONSIN – Associated Banc-Corp (Associated Bank) recently announced the completion of a merger with American National Corporation, including its subsidiary, American National Bank.

“We’re thrilled to welcome our new American National customers and colleagues to Associated,” said Associated Banc-Corp President and CEO Andy Harmening. “Associated has strong growth momentum as a franchise, and this partnership complements and accelerates that momentum while maintaining the same local, dependable and personalized approach that customers of both companies have enjoyed for decades. Importantly, the merger also positions us to deliver enhanced value for our shareholders.”

“We share our new colleagues’ excitement for the future of our united institution,” said John Kotouc, American National Corporation executive co-chairperson/co-CEO, and Wende Kotouc, American National Bank Executive co-chairperson/co-CEO in a joint statement. “This merger with Associated Bank enables American National to create even greater value for its customers through expanded scale and shared expertise.”

While Associated Bank has experienced considerable growth in recent years, it’s been more than five years since the company last acquired another bank.
“Over the last five to six years, we’ve been focused on organic growth and we’ve grown a lot…” DeLoye said. “For instance, we’ve grown our commercial and industrial loans by 53% in the last five years. How did we do that? We did that by investing some of our resources into more bankers… That helps us serve our commercial customers and grow our commercial customer base.”

Growth at Associated Bank, whether it happens organically or through mergers and acquisitions, allows the company to invest in an overall better experience for its customers.

“As we grow as an institution, we’re able to invest more,” DeLoye said. “We’re able to make our technology better. We’re able to enhance our cyber defense team to help not only protect the bank, but protect our customers from the bad guys out in the community that are trying to defraud our customers and take their dollars away.”

American National Bank’s systems, branch locations and customers are expected to be converted later this year with customers continuing to be serviced through their existing branches, which will be rebranded as Associated Bank branches once conversion is complete.

“They’ll see some changes once we go through conversion, and we’ll do that in the third quarter, probably Labor Day weekend,” DeLoye said. “We’ll go through conversion and those American National Bank customers will see the signs change, the platforms and the technology change. Our customers here [at Associated Bank] will be business as usual. However, over time they’ll benefit from a bigger, stronger company that is continuing to invest in the people and the technology and the communities.”