First National Bank team makes local footprint
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Matt Caban • The Madill Record First National Bank – Madill Branch team members from left to right Andrea Porterfield, Julissa Jasso, Lizbeth Phillips, Eva Martinez and Sam Huffman pose for a picture on July 8.
The now open sign outside of the mobile building at 401 S. First St. in Madill is not a typo; there is a new bank in town. The mobile home-like building houses the eleventh branch of First National Bank, headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., said Sam Huffman, the location’s market president.
“A lot of people think it’s a construction work shack for the people who are planning and working on the new building,” Huffman said. “It is a mobile bank. Somewhat like a mobile home in that it looks like a mobile home, but it is set up like a bank. It does have a vault. It does have bullet proof glass through the drive thru.”
Huffman, 66, is a 1971 graduate of Madill High School and a lifelong resident of Marshall County.
Huffman worked at Landmark Bank for 17 years before retiring about three years ago. The opportunity to start something new pulled him out of retirement, Huffman said.
“We started a new bank here in April of this year,” he said. “We plan to break ground this fall, probably be October or somewhere in there, on a new bank facility. It’ll be about 4,000 square feet and have another 2,000 square feet of drive thru. It will have a commercial lane, two drive thrus, and then the fourth lane will be our ATM lane.”
Huffman said the team at First National Bank aimed to have construction start back on June 1.
“We’ve been working with the architect. We have struggled a bit with getting fiber optics to our location. Madill has fiber optics, but it’s quite a chore to get it where you want it. That has slowed us some.”
Weather has also caused delays, Huffman said.
“And the other thing that’s slowed us some is the extremely wet conditions we’ve had because we need to do some dirt work and that sort of thing,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll get going and get moving around the end of September or early October. The architect thinks it will take six to nine months to complete the building.
Banking Services
Huffman said Marshall County has a heavy concentration of agriculture, oil and gas, farm related industries, and other business.
“Our banking model is a community bank,” he said. “Supporting the community and being able to make local decisions rather than from a branch bank standpoint. We’re more responsive. We kind of feel the pulse of the community in that we’re here and we’re involved.”
Huffman said his team is able to do pretty much any kind of consumer lending which would include autos, boat, cattle trailers, four wheelers and motorcycles.
“We’re able to do commercial lending as well which would take in just about any kind of business type loan, which you can imagine,” he said.
“Then we have all the checking accounts and deposit accounts that you would know and have heard of. Also, we have the modern things, like internet banking and remote deposit and those kinds of things that the mobile society we live in now are interested in, so we’re poised and capable.”