Longtime Spokane banking executive Duane Brandenburg is spearheading efforts to form a new bank here, tentatively called RiverBank.


Brandenburg says he and others who have joined him in the venture hope to file the necessary documents with the Washington state Department of Financial Institutions and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. by Oct. 15, and to open the bank in the first quarter of next year.


Weve raised close to $800,000 in seed moneyin two dayswhich will carry us through startup, he says.


Other members of the bank formation team include Dean Bellamy, Steve Utt, and Kay Ferris, all of whom formerly worked with Brandenburg at Spokane-based Farmers & Merchants Bank and later joined him at AmericanWest Bank, also based here. Bellamy and Utt both are former senior vice presidents, and Ferris was Brandenburgs executive assistant at both banks.


We have other members who will be joining us, Brandenburg says.


RiverBank in Formation Inc., the name of the company created to establish the bank, has set up temporary offices on the top floor of a five-story building at 202 E. Spokane Falls Blvd., in the Riverpoint Higher Education Park area, but expects to establish permanent quarters there after its charter is granted.


Brandenburg says the bank will be set up as a subchapter S corporationhe believes it will be the first bank in the Northwest to be so establishedwhich will limit it to 100 or fewer shareholders and will provide it certain tax advantages. It will be a heavily service-oriented, relationship-intensive business bank catering mostly to small-business and commercial clients in the Spokane area with revenues of less than $25 million a year, as well as professional and private-banking clients, he says.


Because of the nonretail niche it plans to serve and how it expects to interact with clients, it wont need a large brick-and-mortar presence or work force here, he says. However, even though it doesnt expect to have a lot of walk-in business, it probably will seek to expand into ground-floor space in the building on Spokane Falls Boulevard, formerly called Trent Avenue through that section, where its offices are located, he says.


Well actually have mobile branches that will go out and collect deposits. Everything will be online image. Well be a paperless bank, Brandenburg says. For many of our (client) businesses, well have our own courier car which will be an approved branch so its FDIC-insured. It also will employ the latest technologies that allow clients to make deposits and conduct other financial business from their locations, he says.


In pursuing the high-touch service banking niche, the bank will follow a business model thats being used by several other institutions in the state, such as the Bank of Clark County, in Vancouver; Thurston First Bank, in Olympia; and First Sound Bank, of Seattle, he says.


Its a unique banking model that seems to be working very well, Brandenburg says.


Brandenburg says he expects the bank to have 12 to 14 employees initially, and to grow to probably no more than 35 employees by the time it reaches $150 million in assets.


One of the things about this model is the extreme efficiency of it, he says.


Brandenburg is a Coeur dAlene native and Eastern Washington University graduate who has about 36 years of banking experience, all of it in the Spokane area. He was employed at Spokane-based Farmers & Merchants Bank for 27 years, working his way up to the position of chief operating officer.


In 1996, Brandenburg became president and CEO of Spokane-based United Security Bank, which United Security Bancorp. later merged with three of its other subsidiary banks to create AmericanWest Bank.


At AmericanWest, in recent years, he has served as president of the banks Inland Northwest region and as executive vice president of commercial lending. He resigned from the latter position in May of this year.


Having committed his life mostly to community banking, though, Brandenburg says he didnt find satisfaction in the larger commercial bank environment. He adds, Ive had a passion to get back to that side of the facility where you can still have those relationships, and give good service, and enjoy what you do.