Arvest Bank establishes centers of excellence to focus on specific industries

Fayetteville-chartered Arvest Bank has established new initiatives dubbed “centers of excellence” focused exclusively on the healthcare and food value chain industries.

Geordie Sanborn, with over 15 years of healthcare sales experience, joins the company from Bank of America to lead the healthcare center. Levi Price, with 12 years at Arvest and most recently as a loan manager in Siloam Springs, was chosen to lead the food value chain center due to extensive experience and relationships in agriculture.

The appointments were announced Thursday (Aug. 17) in a news release. The centers of excellence will focus on creating tailored products and solutions for industry-specific business needs.

“Arvest is well-known for its community focus, so while it’s unique for a bank of our size to establish dedicated centers of excellence, doing so will allow us to use that strength to better serve our customers,” Laura Merling, Arvest’s chief transformation and operations officer, said in the release. “Geordie and Levi have the experience and industry reputation to successfully lead this initiative, and we’re excited for the opportunity this will bring to our customers in these respective markets.”

The news release describes the programs as the next phase of Arvest’s multi-year digital transformation strategy.

Since last year, Arvest has been working with Google’s cloud computing division to overhaul its current IT architecture and systems, including migrating its data centers to Google Cloud.

The Google partnership followed an agreement with London-based fintech firm Thought Machine in September 2021 to implement a next-generation core banking infrastructure and the hiring later that year of former Google Cloud chief transformation officer Laura Merling as chief transformation and operations officer. 

With over $27 billion in assets, Arvest serves over 110 communities through more than 200 branch offices in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.