First Security Offers Multicultural Banking

A year ago, First Security Bank converted the first floor of its 99-year-old building in downtown Springdale into its Multicultural Banking Center.

The bank helps immigrants get checking accounts and home loans even if they aren’t officially U.S. citizens.

“We want them to know that we can be their trusted financial adviser and we can hold their funds for them,” said Jim Taylor, president of First Security’s Northwest Arkansas operations. “We’re not here to promote people being here illegally. But the people are here. That’s a fact of life … We’re here to assist them in their stay.”

The lobby is being renovated, but when they’re done, flags representing each employee and their nationality will hang on the walls there. That means the walls will be decorated with flags from the United States, Arkansas, Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Columbia, El Salvador, Canada and the Marshall Islands. More than 10 percent of the bank’s staff is bilingual in English and Spanish.

The bank has 15 locations and 200 employees in Northwest Arkansas. Two more locations, one each in Bentonville and Rogers, are in the works, and the bank has acquired the land for a branch in Tontitown.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the bank had total deposits of $178.6 million as of June 30 at the Emma Avenue location.

When First Security launched its multicultural center, it hired John Sampson as Hispanic market executive. Sampson was born in Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. At the age of 14, his family moved to Hot Springs. He lived there until he left for the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in public relations and mass communications (with a minor in Spanish).

Sampson, who is bilingual, worked in Little Rock for Navigator Telecommunications and Bank of America before moving to Northwest Arkansas.

“We saw a need,” Taylor said. “The most rapidly growing population in North America, as well as Northwest Arkansas, is the Spanish-speaking market. If we’re going to go into something, we’re going to go in 110 percent.”

Taylor said bank officials traveled to Memphis and Louisville, Ky., and talked to banks in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas and California to do research on multicultural banking.

Since 1990, Arkansas’ Hispanic population has had the second highest growth in the U.S. (next to North Carolina). In 1990, the state’s Hispanic population was 19,876. In 2004, the Hispanic population in Arkansas was estimated to be 117,568, a 492 percent increase.

The U.S. has the third-largest Hispanic population in the world, Sampson said, citing census figures. The purchasing power of Hispanics in the U.S. is about $17 billion now and expected to be $1 trillion by 2010, he said.

But, 56 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. don’t use banks.

Sampson said First Security can help immigrants get individual tax identification numbers. If they’re paying taxes, they can get home ownership loans through the bank, even if they aren’t legally U.S. citizens.