MidFirst Bank

The Midland Group began in 1954 when W.R. Johnston, an experienced Oklahoma banker, purchased a 50 percent 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 percent. Today, the Records family owns 100 percent of the Midland Group.

In 1982, Midland Financial Co. purchased a newly formed charter bank in Stilwell, OK, 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.[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.[2][3]

Today, MidFirst Bank is the largest privately owned bank in the United States, serving more than 625,000 customers.[7] 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 and Western Oklahoma. MidFirst Bank also operates full-service banking centers in Boulder and Edwards, CO, and commercial lending offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, New York City, St. Louis and Southern California.

MidFirst chairman and CEO G. Jeffrey Records, Jr. is a part-owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA through its ownership group, The Professional Basketball Club LLC.[8]

MidFirst serves others through philanthropy, the voluntarism of its employees through the True Corps program and many corporate partnerships and sponsorships.[9][10][11][12][13] The bank also offers financial education programs and workshops to help the community.[14][15]

MidFirst Bank's financial education programs have received national recognition with an Honorable Mention in both the 2016 and 2018 American Bankers Association Community Commitment Awards.[16][17] Additionally, MidFirst has collaborated with the University of Oklahoma in providing the MoneyCoach financial education program.[18]

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.[19]

MidFirst Bank has been voted Best Bank by The Oklahoman for six years in a row, and Best Online and Mobile Banking two years in a row.[20]