1913 Account is 98 Huntington Bank Shows 100-Year-Old Customer Loyalty

by editor

A bank account is 98 while an Ohio woman--still using the same savings account since before World War I--turns 100. Huntington National Bank shows customer loyalty returned at five times the interest rate.
 
June Gregg's father opened the account in Ohio in January 1913 -- 98 years ago -- when June wasn't even a year-and-a-half old. The small-town bank in southern Ohio is now a Huntington National Bank branch located roughly 45 miles south of Columbus in Chillicothe.
 
The actual bank may have changed names but Huntington National Bank confirms Gregg's account is the same savings account and, amazingly, the account number has changed just once in the 100-year-old's lifetime. For customers nowadays, many of whom have experienced multiple bank name changes over just the past several years during routine consolidation of financial institutions, it's surprising to learn the bank name itself has also only changed once in almost 100 years: Columbus-based Huntington National Bank acquired the bank formerly known as "Savings Bank" about one-quarter of a century ago, in the early 1980s.
 
That's a pretty good track record in what is almost a century-long run.
 
Gregg still has the original blue passbook from when the savings account was opened with a whopping initial deposit of $6.11 -- placed in the account by Gregg's dad. June Gregg's father was a farmer who grew corn, wheat and hay -- and opened the Savings Bank account because he wanted his only daughter to learn about thrift and savings. "That's what he always taught us: to stay out of debt and save our money and not buy anything until we had the money to pay for it," the 100-year-old told the news media. "I get along good because I don't have many wants," says Gregg.
 
The 100-year-old retired after being an employee with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) in 1976, after spending more than a quarter of a century working for the mail service. Prior she'd operated a general store and used the savings account for that business -- a store she began in 1932 just three years after high school. Gregg says graduation gifts, including a $2.50 gold piece and a $5 gold piece, went into that bank savings account.
 
With the value of gold currently at its highest, putting those gold pieces into the account -- shortly aftere the Depression -- may be Gregg's only regret: "I wish I hadn't put those [gold pieces] in. It was during the Depression, and my dad told me to put them in the bank."
 
Today those gold pieces -- which garnered just two dollars and fifty cents and five dollars as a direct deposit -- would be worth thousands of dollars per coin.
 
June Gregg has never considered moving her savings account from the Chillicothe bank and location, because she likes the bank.
 
The bank's Chillicothe branch manager, Doug Shoemaker, says it used to be far more common for customers to maintain long-term attachments to banks -- before all the name changes. The Huntington National Bank employee admits consolidation of financial institutions have had a large effect on customer loyalty: "It seems less prevalent today [for a customer to stay with one bank long-term] because we're seeing such consolidation and so many changes in banking, and incentives for [bank] consumers to move."
 
June Gregg still actively uses the Huntington National Bank bank savings account for "personal dealings".  She's just turned 100, the savings account now over 98 years old. While Huntington bank maintains customers whom have chosen to stay with the financial instiution for even 30-40 years, Chillicothe branch manager Shoemaker says: "Certainly I think June [Gregg] takes the cake" for loyalty. In return, Huntington National Bank is giving back some goodwill -- for all those years: the Ohio bank branch is bumping up the customer's interest rate on her savings account, for the next 100 days, to celebrate her birthday and years with the institution.
 
Gregg's interest rate for her savings account will be boosted to about 5 percent for more than three months -- about 5 times the average going interest rate for a bank -- in a rare show of customer loyalty returned.

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