Simmons Bank promotes Charlie Van Ness to market president in Northwest Arkansas
by February 28, 2020 9:32 am 1,595 views
Pine Bluff-based Simmons Bank announced Friday (Feb. 28) that Charlie Van Ness has been promoted to market president in Northwest Arkansas.
Van Ness will report to Simmons’ Greg Martin, who previously served as Northwest Arkansas market president before his recent promotion to executive vice president and division president for Simmons’ Northwest Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma markets late last year.
“Charlie is a tremendous banker and service-oriented leader who will excel in this role,” Martin said in a statement. “His genuine commitment to our Northwest Arkansas community is backed by an ability to quickly build trusted relationships with both community leaders and internal partners and bankers.”
Van Ness most recently served nearly two years as Simmons’ Northwest Arkansas lending manager and has more than 12 years of industry experience. Before joining Simmons, Van Ness was Northwest Arkansas market president of Bear State Bank, which was acquired by Arvest Bank in 2018. He was also senior vice president of commercial lending at First Federal Bank (later Bear State Bank) and as a credit analyst for both Heartland and Regions banks.
A University of Arkansas alumnus, Van Ness is a 2013 graduate of Leadership Fayetteville and a 2018 graduate of the University of Wisconsin’s Graduate School of Banking. He was also a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2016 Forty Under 40 class.
He serves as a member of the Community Action Group with Credit Counseling of Arkansas, having previously served as a board member for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation in Northwest Arkansas.
Simmons Bank has more than 200 branches in eight states, and had total consolidated assets of $21.3 billion as of Dec. 31, 2019.
The company has 79 banking offices in Arkansas, nine of them in Benton and Washington counties in the Northwest Arkansas market.
In terms of bank deposits, Simmons Bank held $316.15 million in its nine Northwest Arkansas offices, according to the most recent Summary of Deposits report compiled by the FDIC. That represents 2.92% of the total market share in the two-county area, and ranks No. 8 among 30 banks with operations in the market.