Fee down

The main phone numbers at three of the four Patriot Bank locations, with branches in Pasco and Pinellas counties, end in 1776.

The reference to the year of the Declaration of Independence is a simple move, Patriot President and CEO David Key says. But it's also symbolic of a three-year movement at the bank, founded in 2004, to restore some apple pie, American-style pride to its approach with customers. Nowhere is that clearer than in service charges on deposit accounts. Those are fees, loathed by consumers nationwide, that became a touchstone of the financial crisis when most banks began to seek anyway possible to make money.

Trinity-based Patriot, says Key, has spent a considerable amount of time and money on the opposite approach after a few years of escalating fees. It shows in the data. The lender posted the largest drop (55.95%) in service charges on deposit accounts among all 40 Gulf Coast-based community banks in the second quarter, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data. It went from $84,000 in 2013 to $37,000.