I hold a soft spot in my heart for this company as I worked for them in a variety of roles in college and have former coworkers who are still friends but they've needed help for a while.
When they were an S&L they were a solid bank who did a lot of mortgage lending and had no issues during the myriad of S&L crises. In the 1990s they moved to being a smaller, more personal version of M&I bank in Wisconsin like Associated Bank (out of Green Bay) is. Wisconsin doesn't have a ton of Chase, Citi or BofA branches but instead has a lot of rural community banks and in the Madison area a former ton of credit unions that have merged and own a lot of the market.
Historically Credit Unions have struggled for customers due to requirements of members and basically unavailable locations. With changes and mergers CUs in Madison such as Summit CU and UW Credit Union are strong and growing and getting a lot of business.
Anchor should be able to capitalize on some of the mistakes that I see from M&I now that they are now BMO Harris as every month you get notices of new fees, reduced branches etc. Anchor often has branches right next to or near M&I and should be trying to get these customers with advertising free checking, etc. When I live in NJ Commerce Bank was doing great (not buy its rates) but longer lobby hours (9 PM on weeknights) and open all day Saturday and Sunday. A change like this for Anchor could be done and would be successful. Add in some more underwriting for rural land and businesses (farmers) and they could add lots of assets quickly. A solid strategy would be to buy a bunch of small community banks in communities of 3-5k people. There is also a lot of nepotism in many parts of HQ.
Current leadership for the past 18 months seems solid but unspectatular and that will not cut it.
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