Calder Bank & Trust has served families, businesses and institutions from Chattanooga since 1913. Today the bank operates 61 offices across Tennessee, north Georgia and north Alabama, with approximately $4.2 billion in assets.
Thomas Ewing Calder opened Calder National Bank on Market Street in 1913, in the year the Federal Reserve System was created. The bank financed the warehouses and foundries that grew up along the river, and it stayed open through the bank holiday of 1933 without a suspension of payments, a fact the family repeated for the next 60 years.
The bank received its trust charter in 1927 and became Calder Bank & Trust. The Wealth and Trust division still administers accounts opened under relationships that began in that decade.
Calder Financial Corporation was formed as the bank holding company in 1984. The bank crossed $1 billion in assets in 1999, $2 billion in 2011 and $4 billion in 2024.
Four acquisitions shaped the current footprint. Sequatchie Valley Savings joined the bank in 1998 and brought the offices north of Chattanooga. Tennessee Valley Bancshares followed in 2007 and opened the Knoxville and Tri-Cities markets. Coosa Federal Savings brought the northwest Georgia offices in 2016. Highland Ridge Bank of Scottsboro brought the bank into north Alabama in 2021.
Integrating four institutions leaves a technology inheritance as much as a client one. The bank completed a multi-year core platform modernization in April 2026 that retired the account servicing systems carried over from the 2016 and 2021 transactions.
R. Wallace Calder, great-grandson of the founder, served as Chief Executive Officer from 1994 until 2016 and as Chairman of the Board until his retirement from the board in 2018. Ellis R. Vandergriff succeeded him as Chief Executive Officer in 2016. Harlan W. Prewitt has served as Chairman since 2018. The Calder family no longer holds an executive or board position, and the holding company has no controlling shareholder.
The bank employs approximately 840 people and operates in three segments: Retail Banking, Commercial and Treasury, and Wealth and Trust. It is a national banking association regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
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