December 12, 2011
Huntington National Bank, a regional financial services provider with $52 billion in assets, serves 1.3 million consumers and 150,000 businesses in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia via a network of 600 branch offices and 1,400 ATMs. It, like many banks, suffered huge losses in 2008 and 2009 when the U.S. economy collapsed. But, with a clear strategy that emphasized customer relationships over customer acquisitions, Huntington engineered a quicker turnaround than most of its peers.
The company turned a profit of $40 million in the first quarter of 2010, after posting losses of $370 million in the previous quarter and $2.4 billion in the previous year. "We really focused on how we build and maintain the relationships with customers we already had," says Zahid Afzal, chief information officer at Huntington, which is based in Columbus, Ohio.
