MidFirst Bank

The Midland Group began in 1954 when W.R. Johnston, an experienced Oklahoma banker, purchased a 50% share in Midland Mortgage Company, an Oklahoma City–based company that had been formed four years earlier by a handful of individual investors. By 1963, Johnston and his son-in-law George Records had purchased the remaining 50%. Today, the Records family owns 100% of the Midland Group. In 1982, Midland Financial Co. purchased a recently formed charter bank in Stilwell, Oklahoma, named it MidFirst Bank and moved it to Oklahoma City. At the end of its first year, the bank had $1.7 million in assets and five employees.

In 2009, MidFirst Bank acquired Community Bank of Arizona and Union Bank, both headquartered in the Phoenix metro area.[5]In 2015, MidFirst Bank acquired Denver-based Steele Street Bank & Trust, a locally owned and operated community bank.[6] In July 2016, MidFirst Bank acquired 1st Century Bancshares in Los Angeles. After the merger, MidFirst Bank's combined assets totaled more than $12 billion.[7][8]

Today, MidFirst Bank is the largest privately owned bank in the nation with assets totaling $29.6 billion [9]and serves 900,000 [10] customers. The bank offers a full range of commercial, trust, private banking and mortgage banking products, and it serves as a commercial real estate lender and major servicer of mortgage loans nationally. Primary markets include Oklahoma City, Denver, Phoenix, Tulsa, Dallas, Los Angeles and western Oklahoma. MidFirst Bank also operates full-service banking centers in Boulder and Edwards, Colorado, and commercial lending offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, St. Louis and Southern California.

MidFirst serves others through philanthropy, the voluntarism of its employees through the True Corps program, and many corporate partnerships and sponsorships.[11][12][13] [14][15] The bank also offers financial education programs and workshops to help the community.[16][17]

MidFirst Bank financial education programs have received Honorable Mention recognition from the American Bankers Association Community Commitment Awards in 2016, 2018 and 2020 in the Financial Education category and in 2020 in the Protecting Older Americans category.[18] Additionally, MidFirst Bank has collaborated with the University of Oklahoma in providing the MoneyCoach financial education program.[19]

MidFirst was awarded the 2019 Excellence In Financial Literacy Education (EIFLE) Award for Organization of the Year (For-Profit) from the Institute for Financial Literacy.[20]

MidFirst Bank has been voted Best Bank in The Oklahoman Readers’ Choice Awards for seven years in a row, and Best Online and Mobile Banking three years in a row. MidFirst Bank was also voted Best Mortgage Lender and Best Bank for CDs in 2020 by The Oklahoman, and named Best Bank by Oklahoma Magazine. [21] [22] Additionally, MidFirst Bank was recognized as the 2021 Newsweek Best Big Bank in Oklahoma.[23]

In 2019, MidFirst Bank ranked first in the Southwest region for the second consecutive year in the J.D. Power Retail Banking Satisfaction Study, receiving the highest score of all banks in the nation in 2018. [24]

MidFirst Bank Chairman and CEO G. Jeffrey Records, Jr. is a part-owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA through its ownership group, Professional Basketball Club.[25]