WHEELING — With deep roots in Wheeling dating back to the 1800s, WesBanco continues to grow through the ever-changing times in today’s banking industry, sustaining its success by maintaining strong ties to the communities it serves.

David Klick, market president for Upper Ohio Valley WesBanco, started working for the company in August 2016. A native of Washington County, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of West Liberty University, his ties to the community and to WesBanco are strong — although his career path didn’t start in a direction toward the banking industry.

“A fun fact is that my dad is retired from WesBanco, my oldest sister works at WesBanco, my other sister works at WesBanco and my brother works at WesBanco,” Klick said. “It’s a family affair. It’s funny — banking was the last thing I thought I’d ever do because it’s such a family thing.”

Klick’s educational background in business administration with a specialization in marketing led him down a separate trailblazing path, of sorts. An entrepreneur at heart, he ran a mixed martial arts and boxing promotion company before getting into banking in 2010.

“I started at PNC Bank — it was sort of a necessity at the time, and then things progressed,” he said. “I got into a management training program at PNC Bank, and I was able to kind of extend my career from there.”

A resident of Brooke County today, Klick remains in the heart of WesBanco’s Upper Ohio Valley region, serving as market president and focusing on the success of the market’s 13-county trade area that boasts around two dozen banking centers.

“Basically, I’m responsible for the profit and loss statement for the Upper Ohio Valley market,” Klick said. “That’s driven by loan production, deposit production and other ancillary services that we have here at the bank. That’s a big part of the job. Another part of the job is career development of employees who work here.”

The fact that so many members of his own family established careers at WesBanco speaks volumes about the company’s culture, Klick noted.

“It’s just a special place to work,” he said. “In a world right now where it’s somewhat of a compressed labor market, being able to build up our own employees has been our competitive advantage. We’ve been fortunate to have a lot of career progression internally here at WesBanco.”

Part of WesBanco’s plan for success starts with promoting an environment that champions the success of its team members.

“I think as we have grown, our management team has really put a focus on development plans and the careers of employees — just making sure that is front of mind and always in focus,” Klick said.

“I credit that to our executive management team and our board of directors.”

Like in many industries, advances in technology and changing trends have kept leaders in the banking industry working to stay current. Klick said new developments in technology and evolving routines of customers have been factors that have prompted banks to change direction with how services are delivered.

“Technology for sure, and customer behaviors and patterns have changed,” he said, noting that in the past, customers needed to go into the bank much more often. “Now with online banking and all of the different bells and whistles that come with that, we’re seeing different customer behaviors and patterns where they’re not coming in as much. So just being able to adjust and to pivot to that, I think, is critical. The only constant in banking is change. We just need to be able to pivot quickly, and we’ve been able to do that.”

While technology made several elements of banking available to customers through online services in recent years, customers did not gravitate to these options in droves until the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing forced customers to change their patterns, and that behavior stuck throughout the industry in many ways afterward when people realized how convenient online banking was.

Banking is a very regulated industry, and it’s hard to speculate about the future of the market, but WesBanco has always been able to provide the best possible service to its customers regardless of how the winds change, Klick indicated.

“I think the customer patterns and behaviors, coupled with our ever increasing ability to meet our customer needs with our online platforms — we’ve adjusted to that well, and we’ve been able to not only retain our client base but we’ve really been able to grow our client base and our geography,” he said.

Today, WesBanco operates in eight states: West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. And that number of states is expected to grow in the very near future.

“It all started here in Wheeling about 150 years ago as The German Bank,” Klick said of WesBanco’s roots. “We’re an institution that’s over 150 years old. We’re a publicly traded entity that is housed right here in Wheeling, and I think that what we’re able to do with the community through our community involvement is pretty special. We really try to get behind the community in the counties that we’re in.”

Klick said WesBanco’s vision statement is to make the community a better place for the people and the businesses to thrive in.

“I think that’s something that we’re very serious about,” he said. “As serious as we are about growing the bank, we’re just as serious about community involvement.”