Three years after entering the Bowling Green market through its Liberty Financial brand, Evansville (Ind.) Teachers Federal Credit Union is ready to open its second branch in the city.

Liberty Financial will open a new Bowling Green location Monday at 2187 Gary Farms Boulevard, off Scottsville Road near the development that includes Home Depot and Gordon Food Service.

A 6,781-square-foot building with six teller stations, the Gary Farms branch will complement the Liberty Financial location that opened in 2019 at 544 Lovers Lane.

Brent Joyce, senior vice president of marketing at Evansville Teachers Federal Credit Union, said last year that the growth of the Lovers Lane branch led to the expansion.

“We have a lot of members in that area, and we’re growing,” Joyce said. “This (Gary Farms) is a high-traffic retail area. It’s a great location. Adding the branch will increase our retail presence and help us grow our membership.”

Joyce said ETFCU created Liberty Financial as its full-service retail credit union brand for the Kentucky and Nashville markets after first testing those markets through its First Liberty Financial Mortgage brand.

“We started with mortgage lending in Louisville, Bowling Green and Owensboro,” Joyce said. “We’re very strong in Louisville.”

The credit union has evolved beyond mortgage lending and now offers a product called Vertical Checking that is fueling its growth.

Tim Ethridge, business development officer for ETFCU, said the Vertical Checking account enables account holders to earn an interest rate of 3.3% on deposits if requirements on number of monthly debit purchases and other stipulations are met.

Vertical Checking was recently named the nation’s best high-yield checking account by Newsweek on the publication’s Best Banks 2022 list. The account has also been recognized by Investopedia and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Like the Vertical Checking product, Liberty Financial is aiming for continued growth. Joyce said southcentral Kentucky and the Nashville area could soon see more branches of the credit union.

“We’re planning quite a bit of growth in all those areas,” he said.