Naugatuck Savings Bank, which has $975 million in assets, said Monday it will change its name to the more recognizable “ion Bank” in the fall.
The move should help ease confusion between Naugatuck Savings and its closely situated competition, publicly traded Naugatuck Valley Savings and Loan, which has assets of $526 million.
Bank officials said the new name for the 143-year-old Naugatuck Savings was selected carefully over more than a year-long process that kicked off when market researchers, told officials there was “confusion among the general public as the bank’s identity and the services it offers.”
A key reason for the change was because the bank hopes to expand beyond the Valley.
By the way, the word “ion” was coined for an electro-chemical process by English scientist Michael Faraday in 1833, who used the old Greek word “for something that goes,” the Chemical Heritage Foundation says, to describe the process.
The actual ionization process involves juicing a substance that will cause a neutral atom to gain or drop electrons, thus giving it a negative or positive charge. Some of the more commonly known ions include bicarbonate, chromate, cyanide, peroxide and sulfate, according to Wikipedia. (The other explanations from the more sciency sites were much more technical, so we stuck with wp.)
The bank said it began the hunt for a new name early this year, eventually landing on ion because bank officials “felt it was an iconic and dynamic name that reflects swift action and nimble movement, much like the quick and responsive service the bank provides its customers.”
Bank leadership also liked how “ion literally puts the letter ‘I’ first in banking, effectively symbolizing the bank’s customer-first philosophy.”
Here in the Mines, we noticed this does capitalize on the popular lowercase “i” trend, which appears to accidentally capitalize on the popularity of certain Cupertino, Calif. computer products. But it’s purely coincidence, we’re sure.
The change in name will not affect account numbers and the bank says it won’t start issuing ion Bank branded checks and debit cards until the fourth quarter, pending regulatory approval. The bank’s holding company, Nutmeg Financial and its Sutherland Insurance Group will also adopt the ion brand name.
While this will clearly make it easy to tell the difference between Naugatuck Savings and Naugatuck Valley Savings, we checked to make sure there would not be any confusion with other ion-branded products, organizations and businesses. Here’s a few we found.
First there’s the Institute of Navigation, founded in 1945, that has a website ion.org. There’s also the new defunct Saturn ion, a compact car produced between 2003 and 2007.
Ion Television is the former PAX network and has been using that name since 2007.
We also found an ion hair products and ion audio on the web.
It’s unclear what other name choices the bank considered.
