Andy Harmening and the value of a good question

Andy Harmening arrived at Associated Bank with a job title that entitled him to do most of the talking. He spent his first hundred days collecting other people’s views. There were employees to hear from, customers to question, investors to meet and community members whose experience of the bank extended well beyond its balance sheet. A new chief executive’s calendar is a statement of priorities. His began with an unusually large space for other people.

That was in 2021. Five years later, the bank had completed a merger with American National Corporation, extending its Midwest business, and Harmening was discussing another push into private wealth. The distance between those two moments is the interesting part of his story. Listening sounds agreeable. Turning what you hear into a growing bank requires choices that will never please everyone.

Harmening’s career offers a way to follow those choices through several institutions, a changing digital business and the stubbornly personal matter of persuading someone to trust a banker. The questions recur even when the office address changes.

A teller’s window, then a wider map

His first banking job was as a teller during college. He earned a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and later an MBA from the University of Cincinnati. His working life took him through branches, small businesses, finance, products and commercial banking before executive management. That route matters: each job offers a different view of the same customer, and a different opportunity to discover how an apparently sensible process becomes an inconvenience.

He grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana, alongside his brother Jeff. The brothers eventually shared a platform at the Executives’ Club of Chicago in 2019, when Jeff was leading General Mills and Andy was running consumer and business banking at Huntington. Their advertised discussion covered customers, digital investment, shared purpose and growth after acquisitions. The products differed considerably. Breakfast cereal and checking accounts do, however, share the awkward requirement that people must keep choosing them.

Harmening began his professional banking career as a branch manager at Fifth Third in Cincinnati. Nine years at U.S. Bank followed, with responsibilities in small business and commercial banking. These were businesses in which a customer’s circumstances rarely fit neatly into the name of a department. Someone running a company has personal finances, too; a growing business can change the needs of everyone attached to it.

In 2005 he joined Bank of the West to manage business banking in Kansas and Missouri. The following year brought a promotion to executive vice president and a move to San Francisco to head Northern California regional banking. By the time he was selected to chair the Consumer Bankers Association board for 2014, his remit included a branch network across 19 Western and Midwestern states. The local banker’s map had become rather large.

The app began with a road trip

Before he became a bank chief executive, Harmening was already thinking publicly about whether banks were responding sensibly to technology. In an essay published in April 2016, he considered the familiar suggestion that banks might follow bookstores and video rental chains into trouble. His argument was more discriminating than the prediction. Different financial technology businesses posed different questions.

Some competed for particular services. Others offered infrastructure or payment capabilities that could help banks serve existing customers. He urged banks to learn from the newcomers while remembering what a relationship across several products could offer. It was an argument for examining the business underneath the fashionable label. An industry can spend a remarkable amount of time debating a word when it could be examining a customer’s difficulty.

Huntington hired him in 2017 to succeed Mary Navarro as its consumer and business banking leader. The appointment also put him alongside a predecessor he already knew through the Consumer Bankers Association. A large institution’s succession involved an existing professional relationship, a reminder that banking’s organizational charts only tell part of its history.

At Huntington, the listening habit acquired a literal itinerary. Before building its mobile experience, The Hub, the bank undertook a two-year road trip to hear what customers wanted. Harmening believed digital channels could feel personal, though he acknowledged that he had begun without certainty that the team could achieve it. That admission gives the work some texture. A hypothesis still needs to survive contact with the people expected to use it.

“we’re big enough to listen to our customers.”

Andy Harmening, on competing with larger banks at Huntington

Asked whether Huntington could compete with Bank of America, he offered that compact answer. The subsequent recognition for Huntington’s mobile experience gave the argument a practical reference point. In 2020, another product, Money Scout, analyzed customers’ spending, income and expenses to move small amounts into savings. Harmening said he had accelerated its rollout because he saw a need. The feature’s scale was deliberately ordinary: transfers between $5 and $50.

One hundred days, then decisions

Associated announced his appointment in March 2021, with an April 28 start date. He succeeded Philip B. Flynn, who remained available in an advisory role during the transition. Chairman Jay Williams emphasized Harmening’s experience in growth, customer service and digital products. The assignment brought those strands together at a bank headquartered in Green Bay.

The hundred-day tour followed. By September, Associated had announced a strategic direction centered on digital delivery and growth. During the latter part of 2021, it launched auto finance, asset-based lending and equipment finance businesses. Its early investor materials show a sequence of meetings, leadership changes and new activities. Listening had occupied the calendar; implementation began occupying the organization.

Growth soon became a question of who would do the work. By early 2024, new appointments included leaders in commercial banking, retail banking and private wealth, along with technology and data roles. Promotions within the company were part of the picture as well. A bank changing several businesses at once needs people who can connect them, and customers eventually experience whether those connections work.

The numbers were less tidy than a recruitment photograph. Associated’s average annual loans rose by $3.3 billion to $29.5 billion in the year discussed in that January 2024 report, while annual net income declined. One-time items included selling part of the residential mortgage portfolio and a special FDIC assessment. Those details belong alongside the growth figures. A strategy can add business while changes elsewhere make the earnings picture harder to read.

There was external recognition, too. Associated led the Upper Midwest region in the 2024 J.D. Power retail banking satisfaction study. That is a dated, specific measure of customer experience. It offers one checkpoint for a leader whose approach depends on the proposition that understanding customers should lead to better service.

The customer also goes to the theater

Harmening’s regional banking story extends into Milwaukee’s cultural life. In 2022, Associated announced a $10 million sponsorship agreement with Milwaukee Repertory Theater, spanning twenty years. The commitment attached its name to the Associated Bank Theater Center and supported the theater’s planned redevelopment. A banking relationship can be brief. A twenty-year agreement has to make room for several changes of scenery.

His community connections also include board service with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, plus Northwestern Mutual’s board of trustees. These positions place him among organizations with different constituencies and responsibilities. They give the word “community” some identifiable institutions behind it.

The bank’s 2022 Twin Cities initiative offers another example of how the local idea travels. Working with market president Paul Schmidt, Associated described an approach that combined charitable activity, volunteering and business development around the market’s particular needs. A headquarters can announce an ambition. Someone in the market still has to recognize which relationships matter and carry the work forward.

A bigger bank, a longer conversation

American National became the next substantial addition. Announced in December 2025 as an approximately $604 million all-stock transaction, the deal promised a stronger Twin Cities presence and expansion into Nebraska and Iowa. The merger closed on April 1, 2026. John and Wende Kotouc were among the American National leaders involved, and Wende joined Associated’s board. The larger footprint brought established customer relationships with it.

Harmening’s stated growth sequence now points toward private wealth. After investments in consumer and commercial banking, he identified that business as a prospective focus for 2027. The logic is understandable: relationships with households and business owners can create a route toward broader financial services. The sequence below represents his stated priorities, rather than a forecast of what customers will do.

In July 2026, he again affirmed that Associated intended to remain independent. In September, the company announced Angela Kelley’s appointment as general counsel, reporting directly to him, with an October effective date. Expansion arrives with ordinary but consequential management work: succession, legal oversight and bringing people into an organization whose shape keeps changing.

The question running through Harmening’s career remains practical. A teller can hear one customer at a window. A banking executive must build ways for many customers and colleagues to be heard, then choose what to do with the answers. Associated’s growth makes that task larger. The first hundred days established a habit. Its value will keep being measured in the decisions that follow.