By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
In a world increasingly fueled by frustration and annoyance, one local bank with a national reach is promoting hometown Hoosier values both inside the business and in the community at large. Merchants Bank takes Hoosier values so seriously, neither employees nor customers are allowed to be consistently rude, hard to deal with, disrespectful, or, well, un-Hoosier.
The Reporter spoke with President and CEO Mike Dunlap about the culture at Merchants Bank and how it is helping the nice guys finish first.
“Our number one rule is you cannot be a jerk and work here,” Dunlap told The Reporter. “We tell that to people when we interview them that we expect you to be a nice person and do your best. And if you’re not going to do that, then you’re not going to fit here. We really try to be careful about the people we hire, then our people know that we’re only bringing in people that we really feel will be a good fit.”
That culture of Hoosier respect and hospitality extends to the customer base.
“We expect our customers to treat our people with respect,” Dunlap said. “They’re not allowed to treat our people inappropriately, or we would tell the customer to please go somewhere else. People see us doing that, and they say, ‘Yes, this is a place I really like to work.’”
Merchants Bank has won best place to work awards from various state and national surveys for several years in a row.
Dunlap said employees feel like the company is looking out for them and they know they are safe, secure, trusted, and respected.
“That pays us back because we’ve created that culture, and that’s really the key to our success. And we found that same thing when we work with IU,” Dunlap said. “We had been working with IU awhile, and they wanted us to sponsor their football field. We started talking about that awhile ago, and we agreed on a deal in August. We really did not know what this was going to turn into. But it’s just been a great partnership where we were able to create a banking relationship. There was a real connection between our organizations, and it was a wonderful culture fit. We felt like both companies were really run with what I would call Hoosier values.”
Agreeing to be the named sponsor of the Indiana University football field last August was a decision with serendipitous timing.
“We were proud to sponsor them, and then they go on to have this amazing season, perfect record national championship, giving us national exposure,” Dunlap said. “It’s just done wonders for our business, and we really helped them too. With the way they played, this really is a win-win relationship.”
While Merchants Bank has a national presence in the banking world, all six of their brick-and-mortar locations are in Indiana. Two are in Carmel. One is in Indianapolis, right across the street from Carmel. The other three are in the Richmond area.
“We’re not a branch-heavy bank,” Dunlap said. “We take the money we save from having all those branches – all those costs – and we put that into the interest rate we pay on our money market accounts and certificates of deposit. The consumer can benefit from a higher rate than a traditional bank can pay because we don’t have all those costs. But yet, we provide all the technology for them with online and mobile banking. You can do all your banking but still get a great rate. So we’re a little different business model than traditional banks.”
Merchants Bank, like many other companies with a heart for service, offers incentives for employees to volunteer time to community projects. In this case, they do so through the MPACT program, with a primary focus on housing, health care, and education.
“MPACT stands for Merchants’ employees Positively Advancing Communities Together,” Dunlap said. “It is a way for our employees to dedicate their time and resources to causes that are important to them in all our local markets, not just central Indiana. But I can tell you, we had over 1,200 community service hours locally here, where our people will go out and they do things for the community. What we do to motivate them to do that is we’ll give them up to two days off or two days of service. So if they go out and serve, we’ll give them an extra vacation day because we want to emphasize how important it is that we go out and positively affect our communities. If they did two days, they would get two vacation days.”
Dunlap told The Reporter it all comes down to Hoosier values.
“We’re really a family-owned business that has grown to a great size, and the number one reason that people like to work at Merchants is because of our culture,” Dunlap said. “Our founders set forth a culture of trust, respect, teamwork, inclusion, customer service, and ‘let’s take great care of our employees, and then they’ll take great care of us.’ And that has really worked for us because there are other companies that don’t look at it that way. We do everything we can to make sure our employees feel supported, trusted, respected, and they are very appreciative of that. So then they go out, and they really want to do well for the company. It just works really well for us.”
It is a simple idea that has led to employee and customer loyalty.
“We don’t have the turnover that other companies have,” Dunlap said. “We just feel like you’re at work with people for as long as you are, so we really need to build a place where people enjoy coming to work, and we do that.”
You can learn more about Merchants Bank online at bankmerchants.com.
