Drew Chandler
The multistate banking business means Drew Chandler is on the road more than he used to be.
Raised in Dallas, Chandler married a local girl he met at Harding University in Searcy and, after a brief return to Dallas, spent 10 years with First Security Bank of Searcy.
In 2011, he became chief financial officer at Farmers Bank & Trust in Magnolia, which posted net income of $10.2 million that year. This year, the bank cleared more than that — $11.1 million — in the first two quarters alone, and for the year, Chandler said, “I think we’ll definitely crack 20.”
Much of that is due to asset growth of nearly 80 percent, from less than $720 million five years ago to almost $1.3 billion as of June 30. In January 2015, Farmers acquired 1st Bank of Texarkana, Texas, and now Chandler lives on the Arkansas side of Texarkana and commutes to Magnolia four days a week.
Growth like that creates new regulatory hurdles, so Chandler had has to hire more staffing for compliance. “It’s become a cost of doing business, so you have to be more efficient with the rest of your services,” he said.
Meanwhile, a growing customer base — especially one in diverse markets, like the north Dallas suburb of Prosper, where FB&T opened a de novo branch earlier this month — expects big-bank services.
“We’ve been investing more in IT and mobile platforms to service our customers that way,” he said, “Some markets are more accepting of that. Millennials don’t use branches much, but we still have customers who come into the branches a lot.”
And balancing those demands is giving a workout to Chandler’s 2015 diploma from the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado.
“I don’t think there’s any secret sauce. You’re just managing your expenses and looking for growth opportunities,” he said.
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