Good afternoon,
There was a time when Bryn Mawr Trust and Wilmington-based WSFS were content to reside in adjacent markets.
WSFS was founded before the Civil War as a savings bank for tradespeople and others of modest means who pooled their savings.
It held on to a loyal customer base while adding banking services.. By contrast, the duPont family parked some of their wealth in downtown neighbors Wilmington Trust and Delaware Trust.
Bryn Mawr was founded during the post-Civil War growth spurt for the Main Line, named for the trains that carried more affluent residents from Philadelphia to one of the nation’s first suburban areas.
Many of Philadelphia’s elite had their own financial institutions to go along with their country homes. Bryn Mawr had a semi-aristocratic ring about it and gained customers while offering both bank and trust services.
The landscape for both changed over the years. WSFS, after a near-death experience with bad loans, recovered. It went on to snap up smaller banks and wealth management operations.
Along the way, a once formidable Wilmington Trust was buried in an avalanche of problem loans. It was acquired for a paltry $300 million by M&T, which kept the Wilmington Trust brand on wealth management operations.
A game-changing moment for WSFS came when it acquired Beneficial, a Philadelphia-area bank of comparable size. Like WSFS, Beneficial had blue-collar roots.
Bryn Mawr suddenly had a larger competitor in its backyard, with a growing wealth management operation.
There had been a time when Bryn Mawr focused on Delaware, believing it to be less competitive than suburban Philly, which seemed to have a branch on every corner.
Bryn Mawr acquired a tiny Delaware bank and had a deal in place to acquire Mid-Coast, a small community bank.
Bryn Mawr dropped the Mid-Coast deal after the Delaware bank’s president was charged with bank fraud. Mid-Coast is now owned by a bank based on the northern edge of Pennsylvania.
After exiting the Mid-Coast deal, Bryn Mawr appeared to lose interest in Delaware banking and focused on the suburban Philadelphia market. with smaller acquisitions. It retained a wealth management operation it had acquired years earlier and a branch office, both in affluent Greenville.
For Bryn Mawr, the pandemic appeared to be a defining moment, with the company making news when it vacated some office space on the Main Line and opted to keep a sizable chunk of its staff working from home.
It proved to be a sign of things to come. – Doug Rainey, chief content officer.
