Earning Your Trust

When was the last time a financial advisor answered your phone call with “Hello” from a real live person??

The First National Bank of Mount Dora (FNBMD) has been answering their phone that way for almost 100 years—and they have no intention of changing that personal approach any time soon. They are, however, bringing their unique brand of community trust and financial services to Winter Garden with an office slated for opening in the first quarter of 2025. Look for it at 504 Plant Street.

After a century serving the Mount Dora community, their wide-ranging and diverse client base has already grown to include many Winter Garden residents. Additionally, many of their own staff members make their homes there, so the move makes perfect sense.

Alice Taft, Vice President and Trust Officer of The First National Bank of Mount Dora, is one of those residents. “Winter Garden is very much a community where people exhibit strong charitable intent,” she says. “We want to help grow that even more. Through services such as investment management, trust administration, and estate planning, we help residents manage and grow their money so that they can give to the organizations they care about and do the things they want to do.”

There are so many banks out there in the world, how does FNBMD compete with all that? According to Regina Lewis, Marketing Coordinator for the bank, it’s simple: “We don’t try to compete. Our goal is not to compete with the larger wealth advisors out there. We are a mid-sized community bank committed to helping our communities thrive. We started out that way back in 1925 and will remain committed to that. Because of our size and the way that we’re structured, we can do things other banks simply cannot.”

A significant part of what they can do involves investment management and wealth building. And Pete Baksh, Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, tells us they handle all that in a very different way. “We have a unique approach to investing. No one can predict the future, so our methods revolve around risk management. We build specific platforms for each client, hand-picking individual securities and personally managing their portfolios to help them reach their goals with as little risk as possible. Mutual funds, for example, have their own managers whom you will never meet, which is why we rarely use them. Instead, we insource investment management and make decisions right here, not somewhere in San Francisco, Chicago, or New York. And we’ve out-performed our benchmarks over long periods of time.”

The First National Bank of Mount Dora plans to offer wealth management, estate planning, financial planning, and trust services at its new Winter Garden location. And if you have questions, you can call them up and ask. They’ll answer the phone themselves and connect you with anyone in the bank you need. You’ll get your questions answered right then and there, without hearing, “Please wait, our menu has changed.”

Trust and Investment Services are:

NOT FDIC Insured

NOT Deposits of the Bank

NOT Guaranteed
by the Bank

NOT Insured by any government agency

MAY lose value