A community bank founded in New Castle 150 years ago has come out on top of a statewide list usually led by names many times its size.

Citizens State Bank is being recognized as the No. 1 504/Third-Party Lender in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Indiana District for the 2025 federal fiscal year. The honor comes jointly from the SBA’s Indiana District Office and Indiana Statewide CDC, the nonprofit that ran the most SBA 504 deals in the state last year. A brief ceremony was held at the Ball State University center in downtown Fishers, in the Nickel Plate District.

According to the SBA’s year-end report, Citizens State Bank backed 10 of these loans worth $12,676,053 between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025 — more deals than any other bank in Indiana. First Merchants Bank was close behind with nine loans, and 1st Source Bank ranked third with eight.

The recognition is a bit of inside baseball, so here’s what it means. The SBA’s 504 program helps small businesses buy buildings or big equipment they couldn’t finance on ordinary terms. The money usually comes from three places: a bank covers about half the project, a CDC — a community lender backed by the SBA — covers roughly 40 percent, and the business owner puts in the rest. The bank in that arrangement is the “third-party lender.” Across Indiana last year, banks supplied about $184.6 million in this first-mortgage financing on 504 projects, and Citizens State Bank wrote more of those loans than anyone else.

That it did so against far larger institutions is what makes the award notable for a bank its size. Citizens State Bank, a fourth-generation, family-owned bank that has served central Indiana since 1873, finished ahead of regional and national lenders that operate dozens or hundreds of branches.

The bank’s SBA work isn’t limited to the 504 program. In the SBA’s larger 7(a) loan category — the agency’s main program for general small-business borrowing — Citizens State Bank ranked 14th in Indiana last year with 21 loans totaling about $11.3 million.

The numbers sit inside a busy year for SBA lending in Indiana. The district approved 1,366 loans in fiscal 2025, putting roughly $695 million of SBA-backed money to work and supporting nearly $880 million in total project financing once bank and borrower dollars are counted.

Citizens Bank sponsors the LarryInFishers Podcast series.