I recently assumed coverage of the banking beat for the Business Record after my esteemed retired colleague, Kent Darr, hung up his pen earlier this year. I soon found some reminders that in a small state like Iowa, you’ve got to be doubly careful to make sure you’ve got the right bank — and bank leader — when doing your reporting. 

It hadn’t occurred to me that there were two prominent Iowa bank leaders named Plagge until I happened to write recently about Bank Iowa’s president and CEO, Jim Plagge, and his bank’s re-visioning campaign. A few weeks later, I went to interview Jeff Plagge, the new superintendent of the Iowa Banking Division. I hadn’t made the connection that they are brothers until I saw they had both grown up near Latimer and followed similar career paths into banking. 

“It is unusual,” Jeff Plagge told me, “especially the fact that we were each leading two of the larger community banks in Iowa.” Notably, no other relative had been in banking that would have influenced two of four brothers in the farm-raised family to each choose banking. (Their other two brothers stayed in farming). Jim Plagge had led Northwestern Bank in Orange City before joining Bank Iowa in 2012, while Jeff, his older brother, led Northwest Bank in Arnolds Park for much of his career. 

 Speaking of Bank Iowa, I also had not realized before that there are actually two banks in Iowa with that name, at least at first glance. After seeing a recent news release from BankIowa, which is based in Independence, the light bulb went off that this eastern Iowa bank is distinct from the West Des Moines-based Bank Iowa that Plagge — Jim, mind you — leads. 

Of course, as the older Plagge now works in a regulatory role, “I firewall myself from anything [Jim’s] bank does,” Jeff said. “The same goes for anything to do with Northwest.”