PORTLAND, Maine — Say goodbye to The Bank of Maine.
After months of regulatory filings and preparation, Camden National Bank plans to take on the physical and digital conversion of the 24 branches it acquired from The Bank of Maine over the weekend, putting up its own newly designed signs.
With the merger, Camden National CEO Greg Dufour said the company decided to cut 35 positions, none at the branch-level. Despite closing four branches, mostly in the Augusta area, he said staffing at its branches will remain steady with the changeover.
“It will be a new sign, but [customers] will probably see the same teller,” Dufour said.
The bank has 25 current openings.
Bank of Maine checks will remain valid in the meantime, and debit cards will stay in use until they are replaced with new chip-enabled versions, Dufour said.
Dufour said the transition was scheduled to start at The Bank of Maine branches at about 3 p.m. Friday, with those branches closing early. Online banking access for those customers would close Sunday night at 6 p.m. and come back online Monday morning at Camden National’s site.
“All of that’s done over the 2½ days,” Dufour said.
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For Camden National, Dufour said the acquisition — the largest in the bank’s history — will double its mortgage lending business and expand its related offerings.
“Even though by bank size they are about 40 percent the size of Camden National, their mortgage business is comparable to ours,” Dufour said.
An uptick in residential real estate purchases has separately allowed Camden to gain a greater share of that market, he said.
Dufour said the larger asset base also will help the bank deal with higher costs of regulatory compliance since the fallout of the national housing crisis and allow it to afford investments to keep up with bank customers’ rapidly changing technological expectations.
The combination will make federally chartered and publicly traded Camden National the largest Maine-based bank in the state by deposits and branches, surpassing Bangor Savings. Camden National expects to have about 10.6 percent of the state’s share of deposits, at $2.6 billion, and about $2.4 billion in loans.
It’s total assets will grow to $3.6 billion from $2.8 billion.
Camden National on Thursday announced details of how shareholders in The Bank of Maine’s parent company SBM Financial Inc. elected to be paid through the merger that called for 80 percent of SBM shares to be exchanged for shares in Camden National and 20 percent to be exchanged for cash.
Dufour said the bank would file the final closing documents for the deal Friday.