🔒Name change, new $23M Danbury HQ propel Ives Bank’s growth strategy

Ives Bank has changed its name from Savings Bank of Danbury and is building a new $23 million headquarters with an eye on future growth, but it’s still committed to remaining a community lender, its CEO says.

In November, the bank came up with the new name honoring late founding member George Ives and his late grandson, famous composer Charles Ives.

CEO Martin Morgado said the rebranding aligns with the bank’s growth strategy, which is to gain wider appeal to communities outside of Danbury.

“We feel the Ives name for the bank gives us a bigger opportunity to grow and expand, not only in our current market but outside of that,” Morgado said.

Meantime, Ives Bank, which provides various business and personal lending services and has grown its assets by 30% since 2020 to $1.6 billion, is demolishing three buildings in the center of downtown Danbury, where it plans this spring to start building a new four-story, 35,000-square-foot headquarters at the corner of Main and White streets.

“We need space in order to house the people we have currently as well as new hires,” Morgado said while sitting in his office with Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves and Farley Santos, the mayor’s economic and community development advisor. “Right now, we have people in converted closets with no windows in this building and our West Street building because we have no space for offices.”

Morgado was referring to the bank’s current two-story, 23,000-square-foot headquarters at 220 Main St., and its three-story, 30,000-square-foot lending center at 35 West St.

The new headquarters and name are part of the bank’s broader growth strategy, which could include opening new branches in Connecticut, New York and perhaps elsewhere.

Ives has 16 branches — five in Danbury, two in New Milford, two in Waterbury, and one each in Bethel, Brookfield, New Fairfield, Newtown, Norwalk, Southbury and Stamford.

“Brewster, (New York), is right on the border, and then White Plains is a good place too,” for potential expansion, Morgado said. “We’re going to triangulate something.”

He said Ives Bank, which has over 200 employees and more than 40,000 customers, is also looking at additional locations in lower Fairfield County.

“We feel that other parts of Connecticut that we weren’t thinking of before would be opportunities for us now,” said Morgado, the bank’s CEO for the past nine years. “There’s no limit for us in doing things. Some of the things that we’re looking at could take us national.”

Driving the growth strategy is a need to grow its deposit base, which funds loans and investments, Morgado said.

Downtown campus

Ives Bank’s new headquarters, which will have a cafeteria, gym and community room, and its two other existing Danbury administrative buildings will bring the bank’s back-office employees into a central downtown area.

“What we’re going to have now is a downtown Danbury campus,” he said. “Right now, we have employees all over the place.”

Ives’ human resources department, for example, sits in the bank’s Plumtrees branch at 59 Newtown Road, while parts of its mortgage and closing departments work out of Waterbury, where it has two locations at 357 Bank St., and 2084 N. Main St.

Ives also has back-office workers at various locations in New Milford and Danbury.

“Bringing them all here, we feel, would be much more productive,” Morgado said. “Right now, we’re using the Amber Room, which is a banquet facility, to do all of my senior management meetings, and all my department head meetings happen there.”

The new headquarters will also allow the bank to expand its digital banking offerings by bringing more employees under one roof for much better collaboration and innovation, he said.

To streamline its digital offerings, the bank has placed four departments — customer service, digital banking, digital applications and digital transformation — under one senior executive.

One individual "will be responsible for different areas that are realigned,” he said. “What I want to do is have all the people together so that if I have a department manager who’s managing different groups throughout the bank, I want them to be in one place.”

Despite the rise of online banking, Ives Bank is still eyeing new branch openings to connect with new potential customer bases. But those new outposts will be about half the size — around 1,500 square feet — of current branches to account for less foot traffic than in the past.

And even with its growth ambitions, Ives Bank remains committed to serving as a community lender for its Danbury-area customers, Morgado said.

“Danbury will always be our home, but we’re going to continue to grow in other places,” he said. “We did not want to give up who we are.”

Alves, Danbury’s mayor, said Ives Bank’s new headquarters will greatly benefit the downtown by bringing many more employees to the city center.

“We want those working professionals who can come in, spend a little money on their lunch breaks at the local eateries and bring a little more of a livelihood to a somewhat distressed area,” Alves said.