Harrison Building & Loan, which has three locations, including one at 1380 Millville Ave. in Hamilton, just celebrated the 100-year mark in 2016. It offers a wide variety of products, including passbook savings, certificates of deposit, Individual Retirement Accounts, NOW checking accounts, money market accounts, loans and more.
The company has a staff of 40 employees, five of whom work at the Hamilton office.
Part of the company’s staying power, Allen said, is the fact that customers get to see the same faces year in and year out.
“The majority of our employees remain with the company throughout their entire career, which strengthens the bond between employee and customer,” he said.
Chartered in 1916 as the Harrison Welfare Building Association, the business changed its name in 1962 to Harrison Building & Loan because of a number of calls concerning the world “welfare.”
It now has three locations; the previous main office that opened in 1974 at 114 Walnut St. in Cincinnati, the present main office constructed and opened in 1991 on New Haven Road and a branch in Hamilton that opened in 2001.
Allen said he enjoys building relationships with customers and making them happy so they come back.
“That’s the goal, the one-on-one, being able to help them with all their financial needs and then to know, overall, that they’re happy and they feel good about what they just did,” he said.
Harrison Building & Loans’ community involvement includes being an active member in Kiwanis, as well as contributing regularly to local charitable fundraising and extracurricular activities.
It also has been an active member of the Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce since it first opened in Hamilton, supporting chamber events and participating on committees and in the Leadership Hamilton program, according to Nancy O’Neill, the chamber’s director of communications and events.
“We like being part of the community because it gives us more person-to-person contact with our customers and helps us build lasting relationships between employees and customers,” Allen said. “We want a generation-to-generation connection.”
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