History
Fremont Bank was founded in 1964 by Morris Hyman, a decorated World War II veteran who came to the Bay Area with his family in 1945. He attended Stanford, earning both his bachelor’s and law degrees in only four years. Under his leadership, Fremont Bank became one of the most successful independent banks in the Bay Area. Morris died in October 2005 but his legacy lives on with his three children who all co-manage Fremont Bank.
Fremont Bank has always been known as an innovative community bank. In 1968, Fremont Bank launched one of the first iterations of Saturday banking. Fremont Bank was also one of the first of its kind to hold extended banking hours, further breaking the stereotypical mold.
In the late 1980s, Fremont Bank developed the “No Closing Cost” Loan Program which reduced the borrowers costs of refinancing their mortgage with fees refunded at closing. These fees were a direct result of changes in mortgage lending practices that involved title insurance policies, appraisals, escrow services, and other changes that effected mortgage lending. The “No Closing Cost” loan was charged at a slightly higher rate and sold in the secondary market at a price high enough to cover the closing costs and bank overhead while generating a profit for the bank. The “No Closing Cost” Loan Program was a revolutionary idea in the lending market at the time and became the most successful real estate loan program the bank had ever instituted. That continues to be the case to this very day.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)