A Northern California community bank founded in 1890, serving individuals, families, and small businesses with deposit accounts, consumer lending, residential mortgages, and commercial banking rooted in relationship service rather than national-scale call-center support.
Exchange Bank started in 1890 on the same Sonoma County ground where its headquarters still stands today. The bank opened to serve local merchants, farmers, and families who wanted a deposit home that understood the rhythms of Northern California agriculture. That founding purpose has carried through more than a century of change: earthquakes, world wars, the Depression, the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, the 2008 financial shock, and a steady shift toward digital service.
The institution's mission, as customers encounter it today, reads as three commitments: keep money safe, lend it locally, and show up when the region needs steady hands. That shows up in Community Reinvestment Act activity, residential mortgage origination across Sonoma, Napa, and Marin counties, and small-business lending that funds wineries, restaurants, contractors, healthcare clinics, and the kind of Main Street employers that a national bank tends to overlook.
A founding date of 1890 places Exchange Bank among the oldest continuously operating independent banks in California. That longevity is not marketing garnish. It means the bank has survived multiple full regulatory regime changes, capitalization standards, and deposit-insurance eras. A bank that passed through the pre-FDIC decades and the 1933 Glass-Steagall reset carries institutional memory that shapes how it underwrites risk today.
This page is an independent reference on the institution of Exchange Bank — who it is, where it works, which regulators oversee it, and how its service model fits into modern Northern California banking. It is not an application form, a rate sheet, or a marketing landing page.
Exchange Bank operates primarily in the Northern California counties of Sonoma, Napa, Marin, and the adjacent corridor running north toward Mendocino and east toward Lake County. Retail branches concentrate in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, and Sonoma, with additional locations in Napa, San Rafael, and surrounding communities. Digital coverage through online banking and the mobile banking app extends statewide for account servicing.
Customers who live in the primary service area have access to full-branch relationships, drive-up service at many locations, and a surcharge-free ATM network that combines Exchange Bank-owned machines with shared-network partners. Customers outside that core area still open and maintain accounts fully through digital channels, with check deposit by mobile camera, bill pay, wire initiation, and statement retrieval handled in the same interfaces used by branch-adjacent members.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1890, in Santa Rosa, California |
| Headquarters | Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California |
| Institution type | Independent community commercial bank |
| Regulators | FDIC member, Federal Reserve System, CFPB consumer oversight |
| Deposit insurance | FDIC per-depositor, per-ownership-category limits |
| Service area | Sonoma, Napa, Marin and adjacent Northern California counties; statewide digital |
Exchange Bank is a state-chartered commercial bank and an FDIC member. Deposit accounts are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to the standard per-depositor, per-ownership-category limits. Customers who want to verify coverage independently can review the FDIC deposit-insurance resources for a walkthrough of how ownership categories aggregate. The bank is also examined by the Federal Reserve System for safety and soundness, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversees its adherence to federal consumer-protection rules. The CFPB maintains a public complaint portal described on the CFPB complaint intake page.
As an Equal Housing Lender, Exchange Bank follows the federal fair-lending framework that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, handicap, familial status, or age in any credit transaction. Mortgage loan originators working for the bank are registered in the NMLS system so a consumer can look them up by name and verify credentials.
Readers who arrived here looking for practical help can move to the login help guide, the dedicated Exchange Bank login page, the online banking explainer, or the mobile banking app overview. Account-specific reading lives under personal checking, savings, money market accounts, home mortgages, and auto loans. Business readers can review business checking, SBA loans, treasury management, and merchant services. Support-oriented pages include the security center, the help resources hub, and the contact directory. Governance context sits on the leadership page, and policy footers link to privacy, terms, and accessibility.
Exchange Bank traces its founding to 1890 in Northern California. The institution has operated continuously as a community-scale bank, moving through every major economic cycle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries while retaining its local headquarters.
Exchange Bank is headquartered in Santa Rosa, California and serves Sonoma, Napa, Marin, and adjacent Northern California counties through a branch network plus full online banking coverage statewide.
Yes. Exchange Bank is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and deposit accounts are insured to the legal per-depositor, per-ownership-category limits published by the FDIC. The bank is also regulated by the Federal Reserve System and subject to oversight from the CFPB for consumer rules.
Community banking means loan decisions, service recovery, and deposit relationships are handled locally rather than at a distant corporate center. In practice, customers can reach a named relationship manager, speak with underwriters who know the regional market, and expect branch staff to have discretion on common service questions.
Exchange Bank contributes through small-business lending, residential mortgage origination, community reinvestment grants, nonprofit partnerships, and Community Reinvestment Act activity reviewed by federal examiners. The bank publishes community impact summaries and participates in local philanthropic initiatives alongside its retail and business banking work.