Four States Bank opens first Queen City branch

Carter Peters: 4SB will likely reallocate some assets to Springfield in the first half of 2026.

Following its 2024 debut as the first new bank charter approved in Missouri in roughly 16 years, Carthage-based Four States Bank has opened a Queen City branch.

The Springfield location opened to customers Jan. 5 at 2045 S. Glenstone Ave., said Jeff Williams, president and CEO of the company, dubbed 4SB for short. It’s the third branch for 4SB, joining its locations at 1946 S. Garrison Ave. in Carthage and 1232 S. Range Line Road in Joplin, both of which he said opened in August 2024. The company also runs an operations center at 213 Lyon St. in Carthage.

“It’s always been part of our plan to establish ourselves as a regional bank, not a Springfield bank or a Joplin bank,” Williams said, adding roughly 40% of the bank’s shareholders are based in the Springfield area. “Our whole strategy was to launch down there and then expand up here as fast as we could get here. And we’re very pleased that within 12 months of actually opening, we were approved for this branch, and we just got it open.”

Williams, along with Carter Peters, the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer, spoke with Springfield Business Journal on Jan. 26 at its new Springfield location.

Of the company’s 31 employees, officials say 11 are working in Springfield, which includes three new hires who form a mortgage department for the local branch. Williams said 4SB’s targeted audience is small- to medium-sized businesses. While it also works with customers on their mortgage needs, such as home loans and home equity lines of credit, Williams estimated roughly 90% of its business to date is commercial-related.

Williams said as of the end of 2025, 4SB has accrued $95 million in assets, $70.6 million in loans and $71.5 million in deposits. Peters said those numbers are exceeding expectations. An SBJ review of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s most recent deposit market share data shows 4SB would rank among the smallest of the existing 40 banks in the Springfield metro. 

“We’re pretty aggressive with our projections,” Williams said. “I think we’re not going to double in size this year, but I would say we project $170 million or so in total assets.”

As operations were entirely in Carthage and Joplin up until January, Peters said 4SB is planning to reallocate some of its assets to Springfield, most likely in the first half of this year.

“We figured it’ll take a little bit of time to get things moving here,” he said of the new branch activity. “We’ll really start to see it ramp up, probably near year two and three for Springfield.”

In Springfield, the bank occupies approximately 7,000 square feet of the ground floor in the two-story Glenstone Avenue building between Cherokee and Seminole streets. Williams declined to disclose startup costs and terms of the five-year lease the company signed with building owner South Glenstone LLC. He said the lease has multiple extension options.

The 14,000-square-foot building previously housed a Regions Bank branch on the first floor but had sat vacant for years, Williams said.

“We did some renovations to the lobby area, but there were no structural issues or any mechanical or plumbing issues,” he said, noting opening a brick-and-mortar location in Springfield was always the plan for its third branch. “It was all in great condition.”

The Springfield branch is by far the largest of the three, as Williams previously told SBJ the Carthage and Joplin branches are around 1,200 square feet each.

In a name
As for its name, officials say Four States Bank was started with a regional approach in mind. Joplin is in the center of what is called the Four States region, Williams said, noting the bank’s regional focus is based in the area that encompasses southeast Kansas, northeast Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri.

Williams said 4SB has investors and customers in all four of those states. However, adding branches beyond Missouri isn’t being pursued at this time.

“The wonderful thing about modern technology and banking today is you don’t always have to have a huge branch network,” he said. “We would certainly entertain the idea if growth and demand in those markets warrant. I would certainly say that’s on the radar, but who knows if that will happen.”

Williams said he and Peters got the ball rolling on launching 4SB. Combined, the two have over 50 years of experience in the banking industry with Williams most recently serving as Joplin region president for Liberty Bank and Guaranty Bank, while Peters previously served as CFO at Guaranty Bank. Williams said he also had been part of a startup, Hometown Bank, over 20 years ago in Carthage. That bank was acquired in 2018 by Guaranty Federal Banchares Inc. (Nasdaq: GFED), according to SBJ archives.

“Just having that history of being involved in a startup in the past was something that got me excited about doing it again,” Williams said.

The two assembled an executive team that includes:

• Board Chair Gary Metzger, a banking veteran of 45 years who oversaw Liberty Bank in Springfield leading up to its 2015 acquisition by Simmons Bank
• Chief Credit Officer Cheryl Holyfield
• Chief Information Officer Nick Lofaro, who previously held the same title at Guaranty Bank

Williams and Peters also are on the board of directors, along with Logan Aguirre, J. Ryan Hamilton, Garry Robinson, Jerry Ross, Patrick Scott, Steven Simon, Stephanie Stenger and Brian Williams, officials say.

In June 2024, 4SB announced it had received regulatory approvals from the Missouri Division of Finance and the FDIC. It operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Four States Bancshares Inc., which acts as the bank’s holding company.

Ahead of its planned opening in summer 2024, Williams said that Four States Bancshares Inc. raised about $25.5 million in capital and invested roughly $23.5 million of that total in the bank. It was the lone capital raise for the company to date, he said.

Peters said 4SB’s entry into the industry comes as the southwest Missouri market is saturated with larger banks. Those large institutions tend to have more red tape when it comes to decision-making, he said.

“Smaller banks, you can get quicker decisions, and you’re right here. We’re the decision makers,” he said of staff in Springfield, Carthage and Joplin. “You don’t have to go to somebody in St. Louis or Kansas City.”

Growth opportunities
No additional local branches are in the works, officials say, but Peters said they’re excited to launch a physical presence in Springfield.

“We have a lot of opportunity there, with businesses and (U.S. Small Business Administration) lending opportunities, and the market’s still growing,” he said. “We’re just now developing our mortgage team here in Springfield. So, I know that’s got tremendous opportunity.”

Aside from posts on its social media platforms, Williams said positive word of mouth through referrals from investors and businesses has largely been the company’s primary means of promotion.

“It’s been a manageable pace for us,” he said, noting many of the company’s employees were added in the last quarter of 2025. “We want to take care of all the business we can, but we want to do this at a measured pace. That way, we can keep our employees busy, but not where they have to work 80 hours a week.”