Two banks with a presence in Springfield are branching into new markets as they hope to secure new revenue sources.
Poplar Bluff-based Southern Bank is bringing its first full-service branch to Springfield as it plans to add up to four banks in the area, and OakStar Bank opened a loan production office on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Southern in Springfield
Less than two years after opening a loan production office in Springfield, Poplar Bluff-based Southern Bank (Nasdaq: SMBC) is engineering a plan to open its first full-service branch in southwest Missouri in the coming weeks.
The company is moving three doors down from its 1,100-square-foot loan production office at 4650 S. National Ave., Ste. C-7, which opened Sept. 1, 2010.
The loan office opened under the leadership of Dave Tooley, a 35-year banking veteran, who came out of retirement from Metropolitan National Bank to bring lending services to the area for Southern.
Jackie Bonner, former chief operating officer and senior vice president of Metropolitan National Bank, was named vice president of Southern Bank responsible for managing the startup of retail operations and business development for the Springfield market. Bonner worked with Tooley at Metropolitan National Bank.
“I’ve always enjoyed working with him and was very excited to have the opportunity to be involved with something from the ground up in this market,” Bonner said.
The new retail site occupies roughly 4,000 square feet at 4650 S. National Ave., Ste. C-4, in South National Office Plaza, according to Justin Cox, Southern Bank’s vice president of commercial lending.
“I think the plan all along was to branch into this market with full-service locations,” Bonner noted. “It’s just happening on a quicker timetable than what had been originally planned.”
Bank officials are targeting a September opening.
Cox said Southern Bank intends to open three or four branches in the city – and possibly Christian County – but he declined to disclose a timeline.
“A lot of it is going to depend on how fast we grow this year. There are just a lot of factors,” he said.
The company is awaiting equipment orders while coordinating with third-party suppliers and training branch staff members, he said. “We want to get it open as soon as we can,” Cox added.
The bank, which will be located in a retail strip center, will offer all the services of any other Southern branch. “It’s going to be a traditional bank. It’s just going to be in a nontraditional setting,” Cox said.
He said there will be no drive-through at this time, but there will be an ATM in its parking lot, which will allow deposit and withdrawal transactions 24 hours a day.
Southern Bank was chartered in 1887 as Poplar Bluff Loan and Building, according to
www.bankwithsouthern.com. It went public in 1994 and today operates 16 full-service banks and two loan production facilities in Missouri and Arkansas. As of Dec. 31, the bank’s assets totaled $690 million.
Doubled up in Kansas City
Mortgage Banking President Aaron Jernigan said OakStar hired four loan officers and two processors for its Kansas City office, which opened May 2 at 1 Ward Parkway.
Jernigan said he had relationships with several former colleagues from North American Savings Bank, where he worked right out of college, and he knew a few them were looking to make a move. That led to talks of opening a Kansas City loan production office.
“After doing the financial analysis on it, it was very clear that it was a win-win situation for both sides,” Jernigan said.
The K.C. team has approximately doubled OakStar’s monthly loan volumes to a range of $15 million to $22 million, he said.
“All of the loan officers that we hired are seasoned veterans,” Jernigan added.
Jernigan said the new office is handling a full line of conventional home financing products and will be serving clients throughout the Kansas City area.
After leaving NASB, Jernigan worked for The Bank in Springfield, which merged with The Signature Bank before being bought by BancorpSouth in 2007. He joined OakStar Bank in December 2009.
“In Springfield, a lot of us have worked together for several years,” said Jernigan, who was among 10 mortgage staffers to move to OakStar from BancorpSouth in late 2009. “Being able to open a loan production office and being able to extend into another market ... basically doubled our production without having to add a lot more overhead.”[[In-content Ad]]
