Corey Chambas was hoping to retire as CEO of First Business Financial Services Inc. as he approached 65, but he had a couple of milestones in mind before he could enjoy a life of leisure.
First, the company had to be performing well and it has been doing just that — consistently meeting or exceeding 10% revenue growth targets during the past five years. Secondly, his successor had to be ready, in place, and the team around that person fully staffed, up to speed and ready to execute.
With those boxes checked, in early May the company announced a 2026 CEO succession plan in which Chambas, 63, will step down and be replaced by Dave Seiler, its current president and chief operating officer.
“Dave is ready and so is the team,” Chambas said. “Everything just lined up.”
Passing the torch
Chambas intends to retire from his role as CEO on May 2, 2026, but he will remain on the boards of directors of FBFS and of its subsidiary, First Business Bank. He joined the organization in 1993 and has been CEO of the parent company since January 2006.
Upon making the announcement, board chairman Jerry Kilcoyne praised Chambas as instrumental in driving growth, shaping corporate culture and building shareholder value. During Chambas’ tenure at FBFS, it has become publicly traded and its stock price, now approaching $50 per share, has done well in comparison to that of other banks, Chambas said.
The company has expanded geographically to metro Milwaukee and the Fox Cities in Wisconsin and to the Kansas City, Missouri, market. It also has branched out into different types of commercial lending, including specialty finance such as asset-based lending and accounts receivable financing.
To hear Chambas tell it, these are all a means to another end.
“It’s more about the opportunities that we’ve created for 365 people (employees) to have successful careers and provide for their families,” Chambas said. “I can’t remember what the number is in our 401(k) plan now, but it’s a gigantic number that so many people have saved for retirement.
“When I joined, we had 18 employees,” he said, “so it was just a handful of people, and now we’ve impacted a lot of lives with the growth of the company.”
The ripple effect of growth was made possible by a strategic plan that calls for 10% annual top-line growth, which includes growing loans and deposits at a 10% or better pace, which helps improve the bottom line and earnings per share, he said. In the first quarter of 2025, the company reported quarterly net income of $11 million and earnings per share of $1.32, which compares to net income of $8.6 million, or $1.04 per share, in the first quarter of 2024. In Q1 2025, it expanded loans by 9.4% and core deposits by 17.7% over the same time period in 2024.
“The key for us has been our organic growth strategy, which is very different over the time that I’ve been in the industry,” Chambas said. “We’ve gone from 14,000 banks (nationally) to roughly 4,000 banks, so the growth for most banks has been throughout acquisition. Our growth has been organic and that accrues to the shareholders.”
Rather than add more geographic locations, the plan is to grow its loans and deposits in the metro Milwaukee and Kansas City markets, which are its largest in terms of population, Seiler said.
Smaller pond, larger impact
First Business Financial Services offers commercial lending, treasury management, business banking and private wealth services.
Chambas, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is thankful that bank founder Jerry Smith found him 32 years ago and plucked him from a big bank — Marshall & Ilsley Bank, acquired by BMO Financial Group in 2011 — “to come to a small pond and have a bigger impact.” For Seiler, who came to First Business in 2016 after 14 years at BMO Harris Bank and nine years at U.S. Bank, it’s a similar story, and this could be said about many First Business employees.
“A lot of our bankers came from big banks and were entrepreneurial at heart, and they wanted to be at a place where they could exercise that entrepreneurial spirit,” Chambas said. “My story is a common story at First Business.”
Seiler has served as president and COO since January 2023, following seven years of service as COO. He earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and business administration and a master’s degree in real estate appraisal and investment analysis from the UW-Madison. He has led all the bank’s revenue-generating business lines and most internal operations.
“It’s really fun to be part of a company where you can make an impact,” said Seiler, who will become only the third CEO in the bank’s 35-year history. “It’s harder to do at a company that has $500 billion in assets. When I came, we were at about $1.6 or $1.8 billion in assets, and we’re almost up to $4 billion now.
“It was really humbling to be put in this position, but it’s also really exciting because, since I got here, all of our teams have gotten better,” Seiler said. “All of our teams of bankers, but also our senior management team has gotten a lot better.”
Madison economics
The local economy looks solid even with the uncertainty brought on by the on-again, off-again threat of higher tariffs and proposed federal budget cuts, including cuts to research grants that affect UW-Madison.Bankers are considered to be among the professional canaries in the coal mine when it comes to looming economic trouble,but both Chambas and Seiler are optimistic about Madison.
“I’m probably more bullish on the local economy because I have better insight and our client base is still OK,” Chambas said. “This stop-and-start nature of the tariffs has been difficult for people to deal with in terms of planning and knowing the future, but nothing’s really been a huge problem at least in our client base with the folks that we’ve talked to.
“From a national perspective, obviously there are bigger implications relative to inflation and growth that aren’t necessarily positive in the short run, but the economy seems to have been resilient enough to deal with it,” Chambas said.
Seiler concurred with that assessment.
“I don’t think our clients have really felt a lot of impact from the changes that have gone on with the tariffs, and we’ll have to keep really staying in close contact with them to monitor that,” he said. “But I would agree with Corey, and I think our local economy is really strong and I would expect it to outperform the national economy as a whole.”
