52 Entities Apply for New Bank Branches

As of Dec. 22, there were 52 applications for new branches made with the Arkansas State Bank Department. Nineteen of those apps, or 36.5 percent, were made to open new branches within the six-county market. All but one had been approved as of press time.

Those numbers don’t include two full-service branches opened by Legacy National Bank of Springdale, one opened by Metropolitan National Bank of Little Rock or one by Priority Bank of Ozark, all of which are not required to apply with the ASBD. That’s about two a month for 2005.

As for aggressive activity, First Security Bancorp of Searcy, with its four different banks, had 10 different applications with the ASBD, all inside the state.

Bank of the Ozarks of Little Rock had nine different applications with the ASBD, with two out-of-state apps concerning the same office in Frisco, Texas.

Arvest Bank of Bentonville also had nine applications with four out-of-state branch requests, three in Oklahoma and one in Missouri.