Community Bank’s window of opportunity came in the 1980s when the organization was faced with three distinct challenges that many banks face even today: how to create big bank services and economies of scale while maintaining the advantages of being a true, local community bank; how to find an innovative way to continue to push improvement in customer service; and how to compete with the aggressive brick-and-mortar expansion of competitor banks. Community Bank’s ultimate answers to those challenges helped fuel tremendous growth that today spreads the organization’s reach across Mississippi and into other Southern states.

A Family of Local Banks
First, to create big bank synergies, Community Bank decided to establish separately chartered banks that operate independently but share services within a common holding company. Unlike most banks which have a central office that dictates policy to branches, this structure gave Community Bank the best of both worlds — pooled resources that can afford expensive technologies and services and local decision makers empowered to act with the community in mind.

This structure not only helps Community Bank offer true community banking, but allows for better trained management as well. Many banks have their quality people serving as branch managers or division directors under the direction of a central office where these people gain little true executive experience in running a bank independently. At Community Bank, CEOs operate their banks independently as true executives —overseeing their bank’s loan portfolio, managing deposits, directing different bank functions, providing leadership in their community, making strategic competitive decisions in their marketplace, working with their own board of directors, and negotiating shared services with their sister banks. This creates a highly effective training ground for leaders.

In an effort to allow all of the bank CEOs to participate in the decision making process for the system and as a way to foster creativity, a combined management meeting is held once a month. At this meeting, holding company management and each bank CEO are represented. Policy is debated, decided, and delegated at these meetings, and CEOs are given the opportunity to not only represent their individual bank interests, but also to shape the direction of the entire banking system.

Owners Work Harder
Second, in an attempt to gain a unique edge in the never-ending battle to outperform the competition in the area of customer service, Community Bank took an extraordinary step. Unlike some banks whose retirement programs require an employee contribution before providing a 4% match, Community Bancshares established an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Under this plan, all staff members are fully funded 10% of their total compensation each year which is invested in the bank’s stock. The move not only provides a comfortable nest egg for Community Bank staffers, but also gives them a vested interest in bank performance — particularly in how their own customer service delivery could enhance the bank’s bottom line and, therefore, their own bottom line.

Build It and They Will Come
Lastly, when faced with bank competition whose strategy was to build an expensive branch on every street corner and find employees to fill it, Community Bank’s response was simple — do the opposite. Community Bank answered by building community headquarters in a few strategic locations, providing customers a superior staff, and taking the money saved and translating it into better rates for customers. The strategy has helped Community Bank surpass its competitors in efficiency by routinely carrying more assets per office than other banks in the South.