SIDNEY — “Despite the increasing levels of financial and economic uncertainty that we all have faced over the past year, Mutual Federal has continued to generate record financial performance through this period,” said President Dean Weinert. “While the residential mortgage market has softened a bit from its last few years of unprecedented activity due to the Fed’s continuing strategic efforts to combat inflation through a series of interest rate hikes, overall loan volume growth for the bank of over 15% has continued to reflect strong growth within our local markets, indicative of the actual underlying strength in our economy.”

His report continues:

The significant inflationary trends continuing to persist through the past year have certainly created some caution in planning for 2023, as expectations are for further inflationary pressures before conditions will likely plateau and interest rates will begin to decline and settle back toward the levels that we experienced over the past two years.

Our bank has also reported consistently increasing deposit totals over the past three years, in both the consumer and commercial sectors here in our western Ohio primary markets. We are also pleased to report that loan volume has also consistently grown at a significantly greater pace than planned, over 14% in 2022, in both our consumer and our commercial lending activities, particularly in the commercial and the commercial real estate sectors of our portfolio. Practicing our relationship banking style, our commercial banking officers and our retail banking officers have been quite busy in working hands on with customers and prospects in answering many questions, developing and customizing specific financial plans and solutions that directly address the current economic climate being experienced.

The partnership with our holding company, Richmond Mutual Bancorporation Inc., has continued to strengthen over the past fifteen years, particularly with the public offering completed three years ago to become a publicly traded institution. This has provided us with the additional capital to protect the bank, and enable us to effectively weather any potential economic recessionary times that could occur in the future. This has also enabled the bank to develop and offer state of the art mobile banking and electronic banking products that provide the technology and financial security that both consumers and businesses alike in today’s world now demand.

Here at Mutual Federal, we were very proud to celebrate in October 2022 our bank’s 100 year anniversary right here in Sidney where we were founded back in 1922. The week featured customer drawings, refreshments, and special events in each of our five western Ohio offices and our central Ohio office in Columbus, culminating with our sponsorship of the annual Economic Outlook Luncheon held at the Sidney Shelby County YMCA, with a keynote speaker from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Planning for 2023 certainly does contain some continuing unknowns and concerns, as the country continues to address the inflation problem, the fluctuating job and labor markets, and the continuing upward trends in interest rate levels. We do feel confident that the situation will continue to be addressed both locally and nationally to hopefully develop the most appropriate steps to alleviate some of these major concerns. As in the past, our own region here in the state of Ohio has again proven to be a leading performer, maintaining our region’s strong and healthy economy through sound management, our strong work ethic, and a sincere caring by the people that live, work, and play here. With all of these facts, we feel optimistic for the continuing economic and financial health of this region in the months to come.