Zions Bank President and CEO Scott Anderson retiring after 33 years

Zions Bank president and CEO Scott Anderson is retiring April 1 after 33 years with the bank, including the last 25 in his current role.

The company made the announcement in a press release Friday.

“It’s with more than the usual measure of appreciation that I extend my heartfelt thanks to Scott Anderson for his years of service to Zions Bank,” Harris Simmons, Zions Bancorporation’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

Simmons said Anderson was instrumental in the bank becoming a leading full-service commercial bank in Utah as well as gaining a strong presence in Idaho and Wyoming.

“He has also been a community leader without equal, serving on nonprofit boards too numerous to count, and contributing his time, talents, and prodigious energy in tackling important challenges, both locally and nationally,” he said.

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Anderson, who has served as president and CEO since 1998, will become non-executive chairman of Zions Bank.

Paul E. Burdiss, who has served as Zions Bancorporation’s executive vice president and chief financial officer since 2015, will succeed Anderson. The company also announced several other leadership changes along with Anderson’s retirement.

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Zions Bank recently celebrated its 150th year in business and was profiled by Deseret News reporter Art Raymond. He wrote:

The secret to its longevity and success? Bank leaders say its all about staying true to the company’s humble roots even as it has become one of the leading financial institutions in the country.

“I think it goes back to the concept that we have always believed banking is a local business,” said Zions Bank President/CEO Scott Anderson in a Deseret News interview. “As we’ve grown it’s been community-by-community and we’ve prioritized ties to those communities and personal relationships with every customer.”

Anderson said Zions has expanded its depth and breadth as a company in lockstep with the growth of Utah and the West and its history can be viewed in two distinctive periods.

For its first 87 years, the bank was owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in those decades the bank’s story closely paralleled the growth of the church, Anderson said. Up until 1957, the bank had a succession of nontraditional bank presidents — all of them leaders of the church. The appointment as bank president was generally a lifetime position for them, corresponding with their tenure as church president.

In 1960, a group of investors led by Roy W. Simmons bought out the church’s majority ownership of the bank. This, Anderson said, began the bank’s modern era and marked the beginning of a period of rapid expansion.

Simmons took on the role of chief executive in 1964 and two years later the company went public in a stock offering that helped raise capital to fuel growth and created a new parent entity that would become Zions Bancorporation.