First Bank taps longtime local banker Shearin to lead Richmond operations

FirstBank’s Richmond branch at 5601 Patterson Ave. (Michael Schwartz)

Fresh off an acquisition that significantly expanded its footprint in the region, First Bank has tapped a longtime local banking executive to help lead its Richmond-area operations.

The Strasburg-based bank this month announced it hired Joe Shearin as its Richmond market president.

When Shearin begins the role March 1, it’ll mark a return to the banking industry after his 2020 retirement as CEO of Sonabank (now known as Primis Bank) and its predecessor, EVB.

First Bank CEO Scott Harvard said he and Shearin have been friends in the industry for years and he had Shearin in mind when the company acquired Touchstone Bank, a $662 million Prince George-based institution, last fall.

Scott Harvard

The deal brought First Bank to $2.1 billion in total assets and included Touchstone’s 12 branches, seven of which are in the southern reaches of the Richmond region, along with $338 million in local deposits from Touchstone.

They add to First Bank’s 21 branches across Virginia, including its existing local presence with a West End branch on Libbie Avenue and a loan office in Innsbrook.

Harvard said that newfound, expanded presence left the bank needing a local leader who knows the Richmond banking market. Shearin was his first call.

“I’m close enough to him to have just planted this seed and said, ‘Joe, we have this combined banking company in Richmond that’s about $400 million in deposits and eight branches and I’m trying to figure out what the strategy is and I need somebody who’s done it before,” Harvard said.

Harvard said Shearin’s decades of local connections will help First Bank gets its name out and continue to grow its franchise in the region.

“We talk all the time about this being a people business, and getting somebody who knows the players in the market, being connected in the market, is really important,” Harvard said. “It’s a big metro area but it’s a lot of small communities. They all have their own character. It’s really important for your leadership to know how the market is built out.”

Shearin, 68, said he didn’t expect to get back into banking after he retired from the industry five years ago.

Joe Shearin

“When I left, I was burned out. I thought I was finished with banking,” Shearin said. “Then I got a little bored.”

He started doing some consulting work for banks and in 2023 was appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to serve a two-year stint as executive director of the Virginia Small Business Financing Authority.

That position, which recently came to an end, had him interacting with banks and lenders around the state. He said that got him thinking about his old industry once again.

“When I was appointed to the (VSBFA) role, I was calling on banks again, and it gave me that little itch to get back into the game,” he said.

The Touchstone territory that First Bank inherited in both southern Virginia and northern North Carolina is also familiar territory for Shearin.

He is a longtime resident of Prince George, where Touchstone had been based, and he grew up in Warrenton, North Carolina, near several Touchstone branches that are now part of First Bank.

Despite the dominance of larger banks in the Richmond region and continued consolidation of smaller competitors, Shearin said he sees an opening in the market for First Bank.

“I see community banks in this greater Richmond area and there’s not one that dominates, and I see it as an opportunity to grow a small franchise kind of like what I did at EVB,” he said referring to his time growing the EVB brand as it expanded into metro Richmond from river country.

“I’ll be out trying to make a name for First Bank,” he said. “I just think there’s a real opportunity. There’s a real sweet niche spot for small business banking.”

In addition to a focus on small business lending, Shearin said the bank will be on the lookout for continued branch growth in the region. Its first move on that front is to finish a new-construction branch Touchstone had put into motion at the Courthouse Landing development in Chesterfield.

“We’ve got to grow the franchise and connect it, circle Richmond,” Shearin said. “It’ll be filling in the footprint.”

As part of Shearin’s arrival, James Black, who had been Touchstone’s CEO before the merger, will be shifting from First Bank’s head of regional operations to chief risk officer.

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