Washington Federal is opening a new banking center in Phoenix to target franchises.
The franchise finance division, to be headed by Marisa Felker, will work out of the the bank's Arizona headquarters in Scottsdale. It's target is the roughly $256 billion franchise industry, said Mike Brown, the bank's Arizona regional president, in a statement.
The Seattle-based bank (Nasdaq: WAFD) has had some level of involvement with financing franchises for years, but the growth in franchising in Phoenix is…