2023 Community Bank Case Study Competition Journal

THIRD PLACE: Messiah University

3 RD PLACE Messiah University

LINKBANK

Students: Nathan Clark Justin Brubaker Clayton Dimpsey Natalie Martin Faculty Advisor: Dwayne Safer

Introduction LINKBANK is built upon four pillars, Live, Integrity, Nurture and Knowledge, these pillars drive every aspect of their company. LINKBANK’s mission is to strengthen local communities and positively impact lives by funding initiatives focused on developing future leaders, promoting financial literacy, and personal growth. Located in central Pennsylvania, LINKBANK (LNKB) is relatively new to the community banking industry as it is coming up on its fifth anniversary. However, this hasn’t stopped LINKBANK from being one of the fastest growing businesses in Pennsylvania, and accumulating assets over $3 billion on a pro forma basis within its first five years as a company. What started out as primarily a commercial lending bank in 2018 has quickly changed. LINKBANK merged with The Gratz Bank in late 2021, which brought in consumer lending and expanded LINKBANK’s reach into a wide variety of Pennsylvania markets. Recently, LINKBANK has set up a mergers of equals agreement with Virginia based bank, Partners Bancorp, which is scheduled to close in Q3 of 2023. This merger will give LINKBANK a glimpse into new emerging markets as well as build on its core brand. Given the current banking situation across the world many individuals are skeptical as to whether banks are a safe place to deposit funds right now. Since the banking collapse, many smaller banks are experiencing shrinking deposits as consumers are looking to deposit into larger “too big to fail” banks. This isn’t the case for LINKBANK as customer confidence hasn’t wavered and loans are slowly increasing

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