Chevy Chase Bank

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chevy Chase Bank, F.S.B.
Type	Private
Founded	1955
Founder	B.F. Saul
Headquarters	Bethesda, Maryland, United States
No. of locations	278 (Jun. 30, 2007)^[1]
Area served	Washington Metropolitan Area
Total assets	$15.3 billion (Dec. 31, 2007)^[2]
Employees	4,381 (Dec. 31, 2007)^[2]
Website	www.chevychasebank.com

This article discusses the current entity which operates as Chevy Chase Bank. An unrelated institution, Chevy Chase Bank and Trust Company, was founded in 1969 and subsequently merged with Citizens Bank and Trust Company of Maryland in 1977, now part of SunTrust Banks.

Chevy Chase Bank, F.S.B. is the largest locally-based banking company in the Washington Metropolitan Area^[3]. Despite its name, it is a federally chartered thrift regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision, rather than a bank. It is privately held and controlled by the B.F. Saul Real Estate Investment Trust; B. Francis Saul II, the grandson of its founder, serves as its chairman^[4].

The bank's core business is residential mortgages and consumer banking; its mortgage subsidiary, the B.F. Saul Mortgage Company, is one of the leading mortgage originators in the region.^[5]. As of December 31, 2007 it held $11.3 billion in deposits^[2].

Chevy Chase Bank has more than 250 branches ^[1] in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and claims to have the largest network of ATMs in the Washington area ^[6]. Officially it is based in McLean, Virginia, although according to ABA routing information it is based in Laurel, Maryland. Its headquarters offices are in downtown Bethesda, Maryland, at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and East-West Highway.

1 Competition
2 Litigation
3 History
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Competition

Its main competitors are the retail banking divisions of larger, supraregional companies such as Bank of America, BB&T, SunTrust Banks, and Wachovia^[7], and so emphasizes its local nature and community involvement in its advertising. It uses a caricature portrayal of Benjamin Franklin as its advertising mascot, who repeats the tagline The Leading Local Bank in its television commercials^[8].

[edit] Litigation

Chevy Chase Bank was the subject of two national class action lawsuits for violations of the Truth in Lending Act of 1968 involving as many as 7,000 mortgage borrowers^[9]. A federal district court ruled against the bank in January 2007, but the ruling was stayed pending appeal to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The bank also agreed to pay $16 million to settle a class action alleging it charged late fees and high interest rates to credit card holders, although it denied wrongdoing^[3].

[edit] History

The bank traces its history to 1892, when B. Francis Saul founded the B.F. Saul Company, a mortgage and real estate firm^[4]. On October 11, 1955^[2], the Chevy Chase Savings And Loan Association was established, taking the name from Chevy Chase, Maryland. Saul's grandson, B. Francis Saul II, made the association a public banking institution in 1969. It became an FDIC-insured federal savings bank in 1985 and changed its name to Chevy Chase Savings Bank, F.S.B. accordingly the following year. It acquired the Standard Savings and Loan Association of Grundy, Virginia, in 1988.

It adopted its current name in 1994 and on January 16, 1996, moved its registration from Chevy Chase to McLean.^[10] It moved into its actual headquarters in Bethesda in 2001.

In 1995 it acquired the historic Alex. Brown & Sons Building in Baltimore, Maryland, which was renovated the following year and is now used for a branch office.^[11]