Milestones: Banking Landmark

Several businesses in the Springfield community – most instantly recognizable by name, if not also reputation – are reaching significant ages this year, either 50, 100 or 150 years in operation. Springfield Business Journal is checking in with a handful of them in a multipart series called Milestones.

As Great Southern Bancorp Inc. (Nasdaq: GSBC) hit the century mark earlier this year, the company’s assets are moving closer to $6 billion.

Great Southern Bank’s assets reached a record-high earlier this year of $5.7 billion, while its deposits were at $4.8 billion, as of June 30. The Springfield-based company, which has a 13-state footprint, operates 90 branches, eight loan production offices and employs over 1,100 people. It’s quite an advancement for the bank, which began on March 1, 1923, as Great Southern Savings and Loan Association. At the time, the bank was founded in downtown Springfield with a $5,000 investment and four employees.

Joe Turner serves today as the bank’s president and CEO, a leadership role he assumed in 1999 from his father, William “Bill” Turner, who remains chair of its board of directors. With nearly a quarter-century at the helm, the younger Turner is the fifth president in the company’s 100 years.

As of June 30, 2022, Great Southern had $1.8 billion in deposits within the Springfield metropolitan statistical area, representing 12% of the MSA market share. The total was enough to continue to lead area banks, although the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will release its newest report in September.

Building branches
The company found success on a small scale for much of its first 50 years, with assets of $80 million in 1974, when Bill Turner exited Commerce Bank to become president at Great Southern, according to Springfield Business Journal archives.

“When I came here in 1974, we just had the one office,” he said in an interview this month. “We had one other office under construction, and that was in Branson.”

By 1976, the new headquarters was built on Battlefield Road and Great Southern operated seven branches, including three in Springfield.

“I felt like in order to prosper, we needed to grow,” Turner said. “I looked at towns near us. Many of them maybe had one bank as competition but that was it. So, we located in a lot of the communities. That was kind of the theory at the time.”

The company went public in 1989 with an initial public offering of $9 per share. GSBC shares were trading at $55 on the Nasdaq stock market as of Aug. 8, with a 52-week range of $45.39 to $64.16 per share. As of Dec. 31, 2022, Bill Turner, Joe Turner and Julie Turner Brown collectively owned 17.2% of GSBC shares, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Joe Turner said adding locations in metropolitan areas has been a focus of his since a few years into his tenure as president.

“Banks need population, they need economic growth and those sorts of things to prosper. Particularly when we got to $1 billion in our core footprint, which was southwest Missouri, we started seeing we needed to be in some larger metropolitan areas,” he said of the assets mark reached in 2000. “That’s why we got into Kansas City, St. Louis, northwest Arkansas.”

The company reached $2 billion in assets five years later and $3 billion by 2009.

While Great Southern began adding production loan offices in 2003 – first in Kansas City, then outside the Midwest to Phoenix and Charlotte, North Carolina – Joe said the company isn’t necessarily looking at expansion along the East and West coasts.

“We feel like our loan platform works in larger metropolitan areas that have good economies,” he said. “We feel like we probably have enough locations right now to support the size we want to be and support the growth we need to have. There are probably other similar sized cities across the country where we could locate at some point.”

Century recognition
As for Great Southern reaching 100 years old, Joe said the employees have always been key to the company’s success.

“You have to have a clear focus and you have to have steady board and executive leadership. You also have to have a supportive shareholder base,” he said. “We understand that our job is to produce results for our shareholders, but we feel like you do that by taking care of your associates.”

While Joe said some companies might think about maximizing results in the next quarter or year – a strategy he termed “short-termism” – that hasn’t been the philosophy at Great Southern.

“That’s never been the way we’ve thought. When you do those sorts of things, oftentimes you do maximize results next year but it’s at the expense of your future,” he said.

Andy Kuntz, CEO of Andy’s Frozen Custard Inc., said his company has been a client for over a third of the bank’s existence. The frozen custard venture began working with the bank when its first store opened in 1986.

“They’ve seen us grow from one store at Lake of the Ozarks in Osage Beach, Missouri, to now 139 units in several states,” he said.

Kuntz, who also personally is a Great Southern customer, said the bank and his company’s values align.

“We’re a quality business. We want quality services, and they are the same way,” he said, adding Andy’s uses the bank for loan services, wire transfers and checking accounts. “I probably have 20 bank accounts on my online banking with Great Southern.”

Kuntz estimates he’s utilized the bank for at least 20 loans over the years but couldn’t recall the total dollar amount.

“For 25 years, they were exclusively the bank that we banked with,” he said. “We’ve grown outside the Springfield market, and with that, we’ve used some other banks to do that. But Great Southern is still a very active part of our growth.”

Future vision
As Great Southern looks beyond its first century in business, the bank is bringing a new branch concept to Springfield. The Great Southern Bank Express Center, which is estimated for completion in the fall, is designed as a four-lane drive-up center utilizing interactive teller machine technology to serve customers, officials say. An existing Great Southern branch at 1615 E. Sunshine St. was razed to make way for the 3,800-square-foot facility, which has an undisclosed cost.

Joe said the tellers will be at the bank’s operations center on Glenstone Avenue, noting the new facility will serve as a pilot for possible additional locations.

“The idea is that you can operate those more efficiently,” he said of the ITM-only center. “The statistics are that one teller can handle four lanes whereas that’s not the case if you have live tellers at locations. That’s something that we may add in the future as well, depending on how it catches on.”

Beyond future investments, such as the Express Center and the addition and maintenance of branches, Joe said Great Southern wants to continue to evolve as customer needs and wants change. He doesn’t want to forecast asset growth by a certain period. Rather, he desires to ensure the bank maintains the high level of customer service it’s built its reputation on.

“What we want to do is do the very best job we can taking care of every one of our customers,” he said. “If we do that, we know that we’ll have opportunity to grow. That’s kind of what we focus on.”