Midwest BankCentre Names Two New Vice Presidents

Ajla Zigic has been promoted to vice president-business development officer and Debbie Lessor has joined Midwest BankCentre as vice president-business development officer. Both report to Erin Erhart, executive vice president of consumer banking and fee services.

Zigic and Lessor both focus on serving small business customers of the bank by identifying valuable resources and providing referrals to help meet customers’ goals for stabilizing and growing their businesses. They also develop and promote small business skill sets among the bank’s retail branch leaders.

Zigic emigrated to the United States from Bosnia at age eight and began her banking career at 17. She was promoted to her new role after success as the Midwest BankCentre’s Clayton BankCentre leader. Since 2019, she has led an engaged and high performing team dedicated to improving the financial wellness of bank customers. She conducted outside sales efforts and business visits to generate new business clients while also expanding existing customer and business banking relationships. She has more than 11 years of banking experience.

Lessor, who has more than 37 years of banking experience, joined Midwest BankCentre from St. Louis Bank, where she was the vice president of cash management. She was responsible for outside sales and service for cash management products, participated on the expansion team for future bank branches and served on a bank committee tasked with leading the bank forward. She was formerly senior vice president-relationship management for Eagle Bank and Trust from 2004-2017. Lessor graduated from St. Louis Community College and the American Institute of Banking.

Midwest BankCentre’s current assets exceed $2 billion and deposits total more than $1.5 billion. A mainstay of the greater St. Louis community banking scene since 1906, the bank employs a staff of about 280 working at 18 bank locations in the City of St. Louis, St. Louis, Jefferson and St. Charles counties in Missouri and St. Clair County in Illinois. It works to empower people, enable business and energize neighborhoods through the strength of its financial services, including personalized consumer and business banking, business cash management, mortgage lending, home equity loans, financial planning and investments, insurance and digital banking.

The bank is a local leader in the St. Louis Regional Financial Empowerment Coalition (formerly the St. Louis Regional Unbanked Task Force) and its Bank-On Save-Up St. Louis initiative. Since 2001, Midwest BankCentre has consecutively achieved the Bauer Financial 5-Star Superior financial rating each quarter. It has been recognized for its success in bringing mainstream financial services to unbanked and underbanked citizens in the region and other diversity and inclusion contributions with the 2019 Community Commitment Award from the American Bankers Association Foundation and the 2018 National Community Bank Service Award from the Independent Community Bankers of America^®.