Southern Bancorp is ‘Banking for the Good of the Community’ An Arkansas bank is being honored next month for its longstanding dedication to the communities it serves. Southern Bancorp’s family of organizations – Southern Bancorp Bank, Southern Bancorp Inc., and Southern Bancorp Community Partners – will be presented with the 2017 Marie Civic Leadership Award on Thursday, October 19, at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in Little Rock. Little Rock attorney William Waddell, who has been involved with the Marie Award for a number of years, explained that the recognition focuses on outstanding Arkansans who have made an impact on their communities and the state through civic service. When choosing honorees for the award, the group looks at topics that have had a positive impact on Arkansas as a whole, and investigate who best represents that sector in the community. This year’s focus is “Banking for the Good of the Community” and the honorees were chosen because of their Outstanding Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) rating and their work in community development. “The work Southern does connects with the community. They bring a positive concept to banking,” he said, noting the revitalization efforts the bank and its subsidiary has funded in towns throughout the Delta. “Southern was a pretty clear choice to us once we did all the research.”
The idea behind Southern Bancorp was born from observations of a similar institution doing work in inner-city Chicago. Seeing a need that could be met, Bill Clinton, Rob Walton, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, and others came together to build a financial institution to serve underbanked and distressed communities. Southern Bancorp has a double-bottom line mission – as with all businesses, they strive to be financially successful, but their founding documents also set forth a standard for social change with a mission to create economic opportunity. “We don’t measure ourselves simply by the dollars we make, we also measure the impact we have,” Williams said. John Olaimey, President and CEO of Southern Bancorp Bank, took that statement a step farther, saying that the organization’s social mission is its competitive edge in the banking industry. In a time when social responsibility has become in vogue, Southern continues to reach back to those roots and provide financial access to underserved and underbanked communities in Arkansas and Mississippi. “You have to balance margin and mission,” added Karama Neal, COO of
What does Southern’s social mission entail? Williams laid it out in a list of what the Southern team calls “Big Hairy Audacious Goals.” Over the next ten years, the organization wants to focus on three things: Supporting 10,000 people in home ownership, not just by making mortgages, but also by offering consumer education courses and other resources to help families sustain their home ownership. Supporting the creation and retention of 100,000 jobs in the markets Southern serves by giving small businesses access to the capital and credit needed. Empowering 1 million people to save. The prevailing theme is to elevate the net worth of a community, not just through a dollar figure, but also providing
Southern works with the national program, Save for America, to teach savings habits early through their school banking programs.
MORE THAN A BOTTOM LINE
For Southern, this type of service is ingrained in the company culture, going far beyond CRA. “We’re honored to receive the award, but for us this is not a CRA-motivated effort. It really goes back to why we were founded,” said Darrin Williams, CEO of Southern Bancorp Inc. “Thirty-five years ago, well before their time, the founders of this organization were really all about doing good and doing well. They had a social mission. That’s who we are.”
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Southern Bancorp Community Partners. “If you build up those communities, if those folks are able to have better jobs, are able to have disposable income, they’re able to do the kinds of things that a financial intermediary like a bank needs them to do. So that makes financial sense in the long term as well, to make those kinds of investments in the people in the communities where we are.”
The Arkansas Banker | September 2017
