Premier Financial is a community bank holding company headquartered in Defiance, Ohio, operating through its primary subsidiary, Premier Bank. Premier Bank runs 73 full-service branches across northwest, northeast, and central Ohio, northeast Indiana, western Pennsylvania, and southeast Michigan. The core business is traditional community banking: gathering deposits from retail and commercial customers and deploying those funds into loans and securities. The loan book is heavily weighted toward real estate, with commercial real estate, residential real estate, and construction together making up roughly 79% of the portfolio. Premier's commercial banking focus targets small to mid-size businesses with annual revenues generally between $1M and $50M, emphasizing relationship banking and personalized service as its core value proposition for this segment. Premier earns a net interest margin on the spread between interest collected on loans and securities and interest paid on deposits and borrowings. Beyond NIM, Premier generates fee income from mortgage banking, mortgage servicing rights (Premier services roughly $2.9B of loans for third parties), and wealth management. Premier funds itself primarily through customer deposits, supplemented by FHLB advances. In July 2024, Premier announced a merger into Wesbanco in a stock-for-stock transaction, under which Premier shareholders receive 0.80 Wesbanco shares per Premier share and will own roughly 30% of the combined company, with closing expected February 28, 2025.