Equitable Co-operative with Weymouth Bank

LYNN – Its president says Equitable Co-operative Bank’s 4,000 Lynn-area customers and local business owners will benefit from the home-grown bank’s merger plans with Weymouth Bank.Equitable’s Lynn and Nahant branches will stay right where they are, but customers walking into the branches next year will find expanded business banking and commercial loan opportunities available to them.”The bank’s name will stay the same and our locations will stay the same, but we will be able to offer more products – we will be a much stronger competitor,” said Equitable President Donald Smith Jr.Smith said the merger reflects changes reshaping the banking landscaping with smaller banks such as Equitable and Weymouth combining forces.”People think of us as a small, local, hometown bank. What we tried to do is find another bank with a similar history and goals,” Smith said.With much of the merger taking place in mid-2015 and stretching into 2016, the two banks’ unification will combine office functions, including risk management, finance and audit, to create, according to Smith, a larger bank better able “to afford the products and services our customers expect from their community bank.”The two banks will merge under the Equitable name with corporate headquarters in Weymouth.”From our standpoint, they are twice our size, but they want to use the Equitable name. That’s great,” Smith said.Founded in 1877, Equitable offers traditional checking and passbook savings bankings as well as a mortgage business that Smith said has expended in recent years. Lynn customers account for about 80 percent of the bank’s deposits.Merging with Weymouth gives Equitable the banking resources to better serve businesses, Smith said.”This is exciting: Our size has handcuffed us for awhile in terms of what we want to do,” he said.Weymouth Bank President Robert W. Terravecchia Jr. said Equitable and Weymouth are among the two oldest co-operative banks in Massachusetts.”By joining together we can continue to offer a customer-focused mutual bank alternative to the large corporate entities that dominate today’s financial services landscape,” Terravecchia said.