Guaranty Bank to open operations center by year's end

Guaranty Bank’s newest full-service branch opened Aug. 28 at 291 E. Hwy. CC in Nixa, where the bank has two other locations. There also are six Guaranty Bank branches in Springfield and one in Ozark.

The bank’s growth has led to its next endeavor – the transformation of a 17,000-square-foot former public health building into a operations center that will serve all 10 branches.

Kenneth Johnston, Guaranty Bank’s vice president of information systems and chief information officer, said the building was purchased earlier this summer from Chuck Floyd for roughly $1.3 million. The property perviously was home to Missouri’s Southwest District Public Health Laboratory.

The renovation project, designed by architecture firm Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc., will be completed by general contractor Morelock-Ross Builders. Johnston said the renovation will push the bank’s total investment in the operations center to at least $1.75 million.

Work is slated to begin this month and should take 12 to 14 weeks.

Johnston said many of the bank functions he oversees, including data processing, information systems and electronic banking, will move into the operations center, along with human resources. Operations Officer Kent Chambers added that automated teller machine/debit card functions, Bank Secrecy Act personnel and the overdraft privileges program also will move to the Elfindale site.

“Research will have a small, dedicated, formal call center … for in-bound customer inquiries,” Chambers said. “The research function, with digital imaging, has become a different job than it used to be.”

Currently, employees who provide those services are shoehorned into Guaranty Bank’s main location at Fort Avenue and Battlefield Road, but 40 of Guaranty Bank’s approximately 175 employees will move to the operations center.

“In 1995, when we built the branch at Fort and Battlefield, we had three branches,” Johnston said. “Today we have 10 branches, and we’ve moved from a savings and loan to a full commercial bank. … I’ve had people working off of banquet tables in my department because we just don’t have the space.”

The operations center also will be home to a newly constructed, dedicated server room, Johnston said, noting that previous server rooms have been created in areas designed for other purposes.

“We’re trying to build it so that it would survive an F3 tornado,” he said.

Much-needed training space also will come online with the opening of the operations center later this year.

“We do our training in somebody’s office that was vacated and turned into a training room,” Johnston said. “We can get six people in that room. That was probably OK when we had 40 to 50 employees.”

The operations center will immediately seat 20 students at a time for training, Johnston added.

“We will actually have a faux bank lobby,” Chambers added. “We’ll have actual teller drawers, the same as if the tellers or new accounts people were at a (branch). We think the familiarization with the placement of the drawers and equipment will help us better train our employees.”

The operations center also will have a conference center that can seat up to 150 people. “We’ve always had to rent space when we wanted to have a meeting,” Johnston said. “That’ll also allow us to reach out to the community and provide bank-sponsored services.”

Johnston said bank officials briefly considered constructing a new building for the operations center, but based on size needs, available developable space and current construction costs, they determined that renovating was the most economical option.

“We’re probably one of the last banks of our size to put in an operations center,” Johnston said. “It’s time, because of our growth over the last three to four years. We’ve really expanded our physical capabilities.”[[In-content Ad]]