White Hall’s Relyance Bank is working to establish a third Saline County location. The $1.5 billion-asset lender intends to build at 100 W. Carpenter St. in Benton.
The bank bought the one-acre site for $516,000 in October 2022 from Ashby Funeral Home Inc., led by Douglas Hawkins, and the Doug & Deb Hawkins Revocable Trust.
Plans call for the construction of a 2,800-SF full-service branch that will blend in with the neighborhood’s architectural vibe.
“We’d like to get started in time to be open by the end of the year,” said Chuck Morgan, Relyance chairman and CEO. “Don’t know if we’ll make it or not. We hope to get going next month.”
The $1.1 billion-deposit Benton market is home to 10 banks fielding 16 branches.
Benton Banking Market
Bank |
Branches |
Deposits |
Share |
| First Security Bank, Searcy | 3 | $340,226 | 31.06% |
| Bank OZK, Little Rock | 3 | $202,561 | 18.49% |
| Regions Bank, Birmingham, Alabama | 1 | $156,442 | 14.28% |
| Arvest Bank, Fayetteville | 1 | $145,227 | 13.26% |
| Simmons Bank, Pine Bluff | 1 | $69,145 | 6.31% |
| Merchants & Farmers Bank, Dumas | 2 | $65,678 | 6.00% |
| Malvern National Bank | 1 | $63,945 | 5.84% |
| Farmers Bank & Trust, Magnolia | 2 | $51,799 | 4.73% |
| First National Bank Texas, Killeen | 1 | $314 | 0.03% |
| Gateway Bank, Rison | 1 | $70 | 0.01% |
| Total | 16 | $1,095,407 |
Relyance entered Saline County with a Hot Springs Village location when Hot Springs Bank & Trust was merged into the bank in December 2013. Its Bryant office was established in March 2018.
The bank also operates four full-service locations in both Little Rock and Pine Bluff; three in Hot Springs; two in White Hall; and one each in Redfield (Jefferson County), Star City, Hot Springs Village, Fordyce and Sheridan.
Relyance recorded a 2023 profit of $13.2 million supported by a staff of 191. The bank produced net income of nearly $11.9 million in 2022.
Savoring Opportunity
George Gleason, chairman and CEO of Bank OZK, noted in the April 8 issue of Arkansas Business that “every crisis creates great opportunities.”
He outlined four ingredients that his bank used as a recipe to capitalize on opportunity during times of economic flux.
- You’ve got to be so conservative and grounded in the way you run your business in good times that you don’t have a lot of problems in bad times. That conservatism and discipline in good times keep you in good shape for the crisis.
- You have got to have extra capital.
- Crisis always creates some degree of liquidity challenges for the banking industry, so you have got to have really good liquidity and really good access to liquidity.
- Most importantly, you’ve got to have the managerial resources, the team that can look at the landscape and understand where the risks are and where the opportunities are and decide how to play your hand in that environment.
“People are critically important, and that’s one of the things that I’m constantly focused on,” Gleason said. “This is a great environment because a lot of banks are laying off talent and cutting back on operations to conserve capital and deal with problems on their balance sheets. That’s letting us hire a lot of really talented people.”
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