John Heaps Jr.
Florence Bank’s longtime President and CEO John Heaps Jr. will retire on May 1 after 25 years in the top job. He is the longest-serving CEO in Florence Bank’s 147-year history.
Kevin Day, Florence Bank’s executive vice president, will succeed Heaps. Day, who joined the bank 11 years ago as its chief financial officer, will become the bank’s president with Heaps remaining as CEO until May 1, when Day will become CEO as well.
Heaps said in a statement that, at 71, the time was right for him to retire.
“We have a strategic plan in place that will guide the continued growth of our bank in Western Mass.,” Heaps said in the statement. “The marketplace is wide open for us. We have an exceptional senior management team, a dedicated board of directors and committed employees.”
Heaps is credited with bringing growth to Florence Bank in an era when independent banks across the country were bought out and merged with larger banks.
“We’ve kept our focus on the customers, the community and the employees,” Heaps said in the statement. “We are committed to our status as an independent, mutual bank, which allows us to keep that focus. That gives us strength.”
During Heaps’ tenure, Florence Bank’s capital has grown from $24 million in 1995 to $161 million in 2019, and assets have grown from $283 million to $1.4 billion. The bank grew from four branches in 1995 to 11, with another branch opening in 2020. The staff has doubled from 112 full-time employees to 221 now.
“It was very methodical growth,” Robert Borawski, a 30-year member of the bank’s board of directors and its current chair, said in a statement. He added that Heaps targeted commercial lending as a growth opportunity and built the lending team from one person in 1995 to nine now.
Heaps said in the statement that he is proud of Florence Bank’s community giving, which totals nearly $600,000 annually. One component of the bank’s giving that Heaps is particularly proud of is the Customers’ Choice Community Grants program. He said his late wife, Jane, suggested the concept for the program, through which bank customers can vote on one nonprofit they’d like the bank to support with a grant. “It was such a unique idea,” he said.
Since 2002, the program has provided over $1.1 million to hundreds of nonprofits. This year the bank will give another $100,000 through the program to more than 50 nonprofits.
“John made an incredible impact on the organizations and communities of Hampshire County by dedicating the bank’s resources and, more importantly, creating a culture of community service at Florence Bank,” Suzanne Beck, who retired in 2019 as executive director of the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce after 26 years of service, said in a statement.
Heaps grew up in Springfield and began his banking career in 1971 in marketing at Valley Bank, later Bay Bank, in Springfield. In 1987, he was first named a bank president for Bank of Boston, also in Springfield. He was 37 at the time, and the Springfield Union-News reported he was the youngest bank CEO in western Massachusetts.
