American Banker has named WSFS CEO Mark Turner as its Community Banker of the Year.
The banking publication and website cited Turner’s role in engineering the merger of Wilmington-based WSFS and Philadelphia’s Beneficial Bancorp. WSFS will emerge as the surviving company.
WSFS and Beneficial have similar roots and asset sizes as savings banks that underwent a conversion to publicly traded companies. However, WSFS, under Turner’s leadership, has been more profitable.
Turner was a Philadelphia banking veteran before joining WSFS. He succeeded Marvin Schoenhals, who helped rescue a bank that was struggling with bad loans and advised expansion by the former management team.
WSFS expanded through mergers of smaller banks and by expanding into fee-based wealth management services. The company also focused on customer service in using expertise from organizations and companies with strengths in that area.
Under the merger plan, Beneficial branches will be converted to the WSFS name, with a quarter of all branches of the two companies closing.
WSFS will reinvest a portion of the savings from the consolidation for new a technology platform that will aid the combined banks in dealing with customers banking from their smartphones and related devices, while also demanding more services.
The merger comes with risks that include a stock market slump that will reduce the value of the deal for shareholders.
Already, Beneficial’s Small Business Administration loan team is moving over to much smaller Meridian Bank, the Philadelphia Business Journal(paywall) reported. Meridian, based in the Philadelphia suburbs, hopes to benefit from industry mergers and branch closings
Turner will step down as CEO of WSFS and serve as chairman. He will be succeeded by another banker with Philadelphia roots, Roger Levenson.
