Univest Bank and Trust Co. CEO K. Leon Moyer to retire

One of the things K. Leon Moyer says he enjoys most about the 43 years he’s worked at Univest was demonstrated by a recent customer call from a local business.

‘They started 36 years ago. We helped them get started,’ Moyer said. ‘Today they’re being run by the third generation, a very successful company and still plenty of opportunity for growth.’

Moyer, president and CEO of Univest Bank and Trust Co. and vice chairman of Univest Corp., will be retiring from those positions on Jan. 1, 2015, but will continue to serve on the Univest Bank and Trust Co. board of directors and become a Univest Corp. of Pennsylvania director.

In an interview the day after the July 23 announcement of his retirement, Moyer also noted some other things he’s liked about the career.

‘You meet new people, you establish new relationships,’ Moyer said, ‘and seeing employees within the company continue to grow in their ability to make larger contributions.’

‘Ambassador’ and ‘mentor’ are two of the terms Jeffrey Schweitzer, Univest Corp. president and CEO, who will become president and CEO of Univest Bank and Trust Co. when Moyer retires, uses to describe Moyer.

‘Leon has always been nothing but incredibly generous to me with his time, his knowledge,’ Schweitzer said. ‘He’s done that for a lot of people in this organization and has been a wonderful asset to this company for a number of years.’

Having started with the company in 1971, Moyer became president of the bank in 2005 and CEO in 2008, Univest said in the release announcing his retirement.

‘In 1971, when I started, we were about $65 million in assets as a bank, with a small trust department, and over the years, we’ve grown from basically a Montgomery County bank to a financial services company that offers, broadly speaking, banking, insurance and investment solutions to our communities,’ Moyer said.

The geographic area in which Univest operates has also grown to include Bucks and Chester counties and the Lehigh Valley, he said.

Technology and regulation are two of the areas in which there has been the most change since he started his career, Moyer, a Franconia resident, said.

‘In addition to providing valuable leadership to Univest, Moyer is well known for his passion for serving the community and ability to cultivate Univest’s culture of philanthropy. He gave his time and shared his expertise by serving on more than a dozen boards and committees for local organizations to help advance their missions and better serve our community,’ Univest said in the release.

Moyer points to Univest’s 2013 Philanthropic Report, which shows the company contributed $1,197,783, with 310 organizations benefiting from those contributions, along with Univest employees having logged 16,753 volunteer hours during the year.

‘There’s a lot of broad support for community and nonprofit organizations within our employee base here at Univest,’ Moyer said. ‘It’s more than just a handful of us that are involved. There’s many of our almost 700 employees that are involved in community and nonprofit organizations.’

The announcement of Moyer’s retirement was released the day before his 65th birthday, but was part of a larger plan begun a few years ago for transitioning to the next generation of company leadership, Schweitzer and Moyer said.

William Aichele, chairman of Univest Corporation of Pennsylvania, retired as Univest CEO the beginning of this year.

‘Both Bill and I have had the fortune to work together for many, many years and were able to develop successors for both of us from within the organization, which is really part of the culture that we have at Univest,’ Moyer said.

‘Spend more time with the family, the grandchildren,’ ‘more free time’ and ‘a little less structured schedule’ are some of the things Moyer said he’s looking forward to in retirement.

There will also be other opportunities he hasn’t yet defined, he said.

‘A part of retirement is you’re supposed to enjoy life, right?’ Moyer said.

Follow Bob Keeler on Twitter @bybobkeeler.