Most folks around these parts say Huey Townsend was born to be a banker.
As a youngster growing up in a tiny Delta town, Townsend spent hours in bank offices where his grandfather, Paul Townsend, and his father, Paul Townsend, Jr. worked.
In junior high school, he joined the bank in an official capacity, working part-time, sometimes operating proof machines, other times handling account services, and occasionally running a teller window.
After graduating from Belzoni High School in 1969, Townsend studied banking, finance, and accounting at Ole Miss, graduating with a B.B.A. degree in 1973. After a two-year stint as a CPA with Ernst & Ernst (now Ernst & Young) in Jackson, Townsend returned to Guaranty Bank & Trust as an internal auditor.
Townsend, now CEO of Belzoni-based Guaranty Bank & Trust, a community-based bank that has locations in Greenville, Hollandale, Indianola and Glen Allen, hits 50 next month and said he wouldn’t have wanted it to turn out any other way.
“I love the Delta and I love banking,” says Townsend. “My grandfather was in banking, then my father became head of Guaranty Bank & Trust after it was purchased from the Grenada Banking System in the 1940s. It was called the Bank of Belzoni at that time. A year after it was purchased, the manager died. My father was working in the other bank, Citizens Bank, and moved over to Guaranty Bank to run it, which he did until he decided to slow down a number of years ago.”
Townsend and his wife, Laura Royal Townsend, have two children - Hue Townsend, 24, who works for the Chicago Board of Trade in Chicago, and Elizabeth Townsend, 21, a senior at Delta State University, who is studying elementary education.
“I don’t know that my son will follow in banking in the Delta. He seems to prefer the bigger towns,” Townsend says with a chuckle.
And while many community banks have been gobbled up in mergers that have dominated the banking industry in the past four years, Guaranty Bank & Trust, through Townsend’s leadership, has continued to prosper. In 1998, GB&T purchased the Bank of Hollandale, which included a bank and drive-thru facility in Hollandale, a small branch in Glen Allen, and two locations in Greenville, called the Washington County Bank.
Through the years, Townsend has lended support and leadership, when called upon -- to Belzoni, the Delta, the banking industry, and the state. An elder with First Presbyterian Church of Belzoni and a Rotarian since 1975, Townsend’s community involvement includes serving as past president and director of the Belzoni Rotary Club, director and past president of the Belzoni-Humphreys Development Foundation, member of Delta Council’s development committee, and past commissioner of the Mid-Delta Empowerment Zone Alliance.
His community involvement also includes serving as past president and director of Humphreys Academy, past director of Humphreys County Country Club, and the local Boy Scouts of America troop (he was an Eagle Scout).
“It is a bank’s responsibility to be at the forefront of helping communities develop economically,” he says. “We pride ourselves on our community involvement, and we think we’ve been an integral part of the growth of our communities. Historically, those communities have been Belzoni, then Hollandale, now we’re in Indianola and Greenville. But we have been involved from the start with the Belzoni-Humphreys Development Foundation, which has been very successful in recruiting industry and working to improve the economic activity of Humphreys County. Through the Foundation, we’ve helped create the catfish museum, assisted downtown revitalization with low interest rate loans, recruited industry, and hosted luncheons and meetings with industry.”
A graduate of Leadership Mississippi, Townsend has served in various statewide positions, such as past director of the Mississippi Economic Council.
His professional affiliations include serving as a member of the American Bankers Association Community Bankers Council, chairman of Mississippi Bankers Association’s insurance committee and a past member of MBA’s executive committee.
“The Delta and community banking have a very good future,” says Townsend. “We’ll have to work at it, and there will need to be a lot of changes in the financial industry, but I’m very optimistic.”
At one time, industry execs thought technology would kill small community banks. Instead, the Internet has altered the playing field.
“We’re having a website designed right now and we’ll introduce Internet banking soon,” Townsend says. “It’s another way we can serve our customers. Banking has to be a customer-driven business, where we meet the needs of our customers in the most convenient way for them. I don’t think Internet banking is going to be the only way to bank. I think personal customer service is the hallmark of banking, and that’s where our future is. And we’ve made sure that the bank provides a full range of competitively priced products, designed to meet the needs of local customers.”
Community banks have more funding options these days, Townsend says.
“Community banks are using more and varied sources of funds,” says Townsend. “For example, more community bank are turning to the Federal Home Loan Bank in order to get stable funding to meet the needs of the local community where there may not be enough deposits to meet the loan needs, or where the deposit structure cannot fund longer term loans as the customers would like. Therefore, we can go to the Federal Home Loan Bank for alternative funding sources. The farm credit system is one such source for farm lending. We have done that to meet the needs of our farming customers.”
Because GB&T is based in Belzoni, the catfish capital of the world, roughly 60% of its loan portfolio is agricultural. Nearly half of all agricultural loans are catfish industry-related loans, Townsend says.
When he’s not at home or at the office, Townsend usually heads to the nearest tennis court, where he’s an avid tennis player.
“Turning 50 is an adventure,” he says, with a laugh. “Just the other day, I was asked to play on the seniors tennis team, where I would be the youngest member. Now that’s a first!” DBJ