DESOTO, Ill. (WSIL) -- The Village of DeSoto may soon be without a brick-and-mortar bank because First Mid Bank and Trust are consolidating some of their locations.
The DeSoto Village has had a bank in its village for at least a century.
Village President John Evans told News 3, in December, they were informed in December the branch would close in April.
Evans said members of the community began receiving letters of the bank's consolidation this week from the bank holding company, First Mid-Illinois Bancshares, Incorporate.
Once the village board received the letter notifying them of the bank closure they created a bank committee whose main responsibility is to find a bank holding company interested in renting the brick-and-mortar building.
The letter from First Mid-Illinois Bankshares, Inc. explained to customers that after the consolidation, an ATM would be set up for customers to use, another banking option would be to travel to nearby branches in Murphysboro or Carbondale or continue utilizing mobile online banking.
"There's people that don't have online banking, there is a lot of elderly people, a lot of people go to the bank to other things too. And, from what we understand, the bank wasn't losing money, it was just something that their board decided to do," said Evans.
Meanwhile, Robin Dean the Regional Deposit Manager for First Mid Bank in ¾ÅÓÎÌåÓý Illinois said they made their decision to shutdown the DeSoto location because of lack of use.
"And just like with COVID-19, people just stopped coming into the lobbies at all and once those people got used to the online mobile banking, we're just not seeing them comeback into the branches," said Dean.
The United States Post Office owns the brick-and-mortar building, Evans said, it is not clear where First Mid Bank will place its ATM for customers to use.
Employees working in the DeSoto branch are expected to be relocated to other area branches.
