Wisconsin bank moves into SWFL with $6M investment in branches

A $2 billion Wisconsin bank — delivering on a promise its founder made some 20 years ago — is making a multimillion dollar investment in Southwest Florida, with two branches in Cape Coral.

The institution, Wausau-based IncredibleBank, opened its first branch in 2024 in Southwest Cape Coral. It then held a groundbreaking this week for construction on another branch, in Northeast Cape Coral, says IncredibleBank CEO Todd Nagel. 

The bank has built momentum in the area in the past year, Nagel says, with business-lending focus on the service industry targeting electricians, plumbers, concrete firms, landscapers and more. “The service industry is massive here,” he says. 

Nagel, who has a home in Cape Coral, recalls a conversation he had with the bank’s founder, Ron Nicklaus, who also had a home in the area, around 2005. “Someday we’re going to build a bank in Southwest Florida,” Nagel says Nicklaus told him. (Nicklaus died in 2023, at 87.)

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The first branch, 2512 Skyline Blvd., opened in February 2024. The second branch is expected to open sometime within the next year. Each branch cost about $3 million to build, Nagel says.

Nagel acknowledges the industry, especially the big banks, are steering away from the brick and mortar branch model. And while IncredibleBank, he says, has a digital component that can compete with any other bank, branches remain part of its model. In-store employees not only handle banking tasks — its tellers will count change, Nagel says — but are also something of virtual concierges, helping clients with digital banking. 

An unexpected advantage of having branches, Nagel says, is the Interstate 75-to-Southwest Florida pipeline, in that Midwest snowbirds have gravitated toward a hometown bank. “The aw shucks, Midwest market works very well for us,” he says, adding retail customers “weren’t part of the original business plan, but we are rolling with it.”

Nicklaus founded the bank in 1983 in a classic entrepreneurial way: he saw a need and seized it. He was originally a farmer, with a custom green bean harvesting business, Nicklaus Enterprises, he founded in 1956. The business, according to his obituary, supplied green beans for the canning industry. 

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But, Nagel says, Nicklaus had “a lot of challenges with banks” that didn’t have the sense of urgency a growing business needed in a lender. “He said, ‘one day I’m going to buy a bank and we will teach bankers how to work with business customers.’”

Nicklaus sold the harvesting business and land in 1982 and bought a controlling interest in River Valley State Bank in Rothschild, Wisconsin. That bank had $25 million in assets back then. He later bought two other banks in Wisconsin, and, in the 1990s, as the bank grew, his two sons joined the business. “His philosophy,” according to his obituary, “was that every customer, business and community is unique, which allowed his banking business to grow and flourish along with the communities they served.”

The bank changed its name to IncredibleBank in 2019, and, with $2.04 billion in assets through June 30, it’s now a top-five institution in Wisconsin among privately-owned community banks. It changed its name, executives say, because it heard often from customers it had incredible service, or what the bank now calls its Incredible Customer Experience (ICE). Nagel says that includes answering the phone without a “press zero” for a human and getting back to you within a day. 

The ICE motto, says Nagel, is why he believes the brick and mortar expansion is a good move for IncredibleBank. “I feel like some big banks have lost sight of the customer,” he says. “We won’t beat those banks on price but we will always beat them on service.”