Oklahoma Bank to Buy Benefit Bank of Fort Smith

Fort Smith-based Benefit Bank is being sold to an Oklahoma bank holding company.

Ironhorse Financial Group Inc. of Muskogee, Oklahoma, holding company of Armstrong Bank of Muskogee, announced Dec. 29 its intentions to acquire 100 percent of the stock of Benefit Bank, which is owned by Benefit Financial Group Inc.

Armstrong Bank and Benefit Bank will continue to operate as separate banks until the transaction is closed. Pending regulatory approval, the acquisition should be completed in the first quarter of 2015.

“We have wanted to be in Arkansas for some time and could not have found a better partner than Benefit Bank,” Sinclair Armstrong, chairman of Armstrong Bank, said in a news release. “We have a strong retail franchise of branch offices just across the state line so this presents a great expansionary opportunity for us.”

Armstrong retired from medical practice in 2006 after owning a practice in Fort Smith for 30 years. He still maintains a residence there.

Benefit Bank has four full-service locations in Fort Smith and has operated a loan production office on the west side of Springdale since June 2008.

The bank submitted an application to the Arkansas State Bank Department on Aug. 14 for a full-service branch in Springdale at the corner of Arkansas 412 and Founders Park Drive West.

Benefit Bank, chartered in 1999 as a savings and loan thrift, was approved for a state bank charter in June. As of Sept. 30 the bank had total assets of $187.4 million, according to the most recent data available from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

In terms of bank deposits ($140 million), Benefit Bank is the sixth-largest bank in Sebastian County.

Armstrong Bank was established in 1910 and has total assets of $652.7 million, according to the FDIC.

The bank, which had just one location as recently as 1983, now has 17 full-service locations in northern and eastern Oklahoma along the Interstate 40 corridor.

The Armstrong family has owned the bank since 1922.