116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust continues to build on successes
Bank founder Larry Helling prepares to step back following visionary leadership and growth
Apr. 20, 2025 5:00 am, Updated: Apr. 22, 2025 8:12 am
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As Larry Helling talks about his plans to step back from the role of CEO at Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust, it becomes easy to lose track of time.
The bank has grown its deep roots quickly, making it easy to forget that it was an idea in a notebook just 24 years ago. Now, the bank has $2.6 billion in assets and leads market share in Iowa’s second-largest county.
While the bank has seen many community changes in a short period — a pandemic, a record flood, a derecho and major recession — the focus on building meaningful and lasting relationships focused on the long-term growth has endured.
“There have been a few times where things were really pretty stressful,” Helling said during a recent interview with The Gazette. “But even in tough times with lots of external forces, the team shined even more than normal.”
Helling, 69, who has led CRBT since its founding in 2001, is getting ready to retire. James Klein, 51, the bank’s current president and 21-year direct report of Helling, will expand into the CEO role.
CRBT is a far cry from where it started — with 17 employees and around $14.5 million in assets in 2001. The bank now has 235 employees. It has the largest deposit market share in Linn County, with nearly one-fourth of the market, according to FDIC data. Employees donate thousands of hours of volunteer time and the bank is financing many commercial projects in the community.
“If we do this right, our employees and clients aren’t really going to feel anything is different,” Helling said. “This is something that we’ve been working on for years.”
Helling, who will transition to a part-time consultant role after a shareholder meeting next month, is proud of what the bank has become and said he feels extremely fortunate to get to work alongside so many talented employees. He’s quick to point to the organization’s people and culture as the drivers of success.
Having been active in Rotary and other community organizations for many years, Helling has no plans to leave Cedar Rapids — other than to visit grandkids.
Klein, who joined the bank in 2004 and has been president since 2019, has spent the last 21 years with Helling as his boss. Klein is a familiar face across Cedar Rapids — be it on the Cedar Rapids Economic Alliance Policy Board, as chair of the downtown Self-Supporting Municipal Improvement District, or as a board member.
While the two leaders say they have different approaches, they are in lockstep when it comes to core values and the importance of people in the organization.
“A community bank is built upon the relationships. By being in the community, we get to understand and see things from different perspectives,” Klein said. “The things we learn help us grow, help our clients grow and help our bank continue to grow.”
Employees logged more than 7,300 hours to more than 140 community organizations in 2024, the company noted in its annual report.
Helling says he’s proud and thankful for the team who has taken a vision and grown it into an organization that should see continued growth long into the future.
The first 10 years played out pretty clearly to plan, but the growth and strength of the organization today goes beyond what he imagined.
“Our employees and our community believe in the work we are doing,” he said. “They have from the time we started.”
The bank’s origin story isn’t for the faint of heart.
Helling was working at a bank in February 2001, but was no longer proud to be there.
Ideas for a new operation were on a notepad in his desk. He and CRBT’s other founders — Mitch McElree, Dana Nichols and John Rodriguez — spent about 30 days working on a plan for a local bank. By early April, they quit their jobs and within months were four of the 17 employees who worked at the bank when it opened in 2001.
The bank was legally founded on Sept. 14, 2001, three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The bank — which had about $14.5 million in assets — opened its first location two weeks later, in the GreatAmerica Building in downtown Cedar Rapids.
The bank hit about $100 million in assets within about 18 months, and opened up branches over the next few years. The bank opened its main branch, at 500 First Ave. NE, in 2005. In 2017, Guaranty Bank and Trust merged with CRBT.
The growth has continued, and the bank held a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month for its newest facility — a $20 million, three-story building across Sixth Street NE from the main branch. The new facility houses about 44 employees from the bank’s specialty finance, retail administration, bank operations and the client care teams as well as some holding company employees based in Cedar Rapids, said Wendy Nielsen, senior vice president and CRBT experience officer.
The new 34,000-square-foot building has room for additional expansion, and is designed to accommodate up to 109 employees in the building, company officials said.
While economic news has dominated the headlines in recent months, both Helling and Klein are confident in the Linn County market.
“The great thing about Eastern Iowa is that our economy is slow and steady and we just plug away,” Klein said.
The focus for 2025 will remain supporting employees, clients and the community while staying focused on the organization’s core beliefs, Klein said.
“We’re not going to change our core values,” Klein said. “The core of our success is thinking about the long term, investing in our people and our community and doing the right thing.”
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