By high school, L. Kyle Williams had developed an interest in accounting and business classes and planned to attend Missouri State (formerly Southwest Missouri State University). The Cassville, Missouri, branch of Commerce Bank offered a scholarship to a local high school senior every year, and Kyle filled out an application during his senior year. The bank chose him as the recipient in the spring of 1992. Jon Horner, who was vice president of commercial lending at Commerce Bank, offered Kyle the scholarship and a summer job as a teller.
Kyle worked summers and the Christmas holiday for two years at the bank, then transferred to the Springfield branch of Commerce Bank. He worked there the remaining three years of college, part-time during school and full-time during each summer. Another transfer after graduation took him to the St. Louis branch of Commerce Bank for more than four years of management training.
Kyle has been significantly influenced as a banker by Gary Kuhn at Citizens Bank in New Haven, Missouri. Kyle met Gary when Kyle came into the bank looking for a home equity loan on a Saturday, five minutes before closing. On the following Monday, Gary offered Kyle a job that was similar to what he was doing in St. Louis.
“Gary did have an impact,” said Kyle. “I am where I am today because he offered me a job and gave me an opportunity to work for a community bank as a change from working for a larger institution.”
Switching banks wasn’t a hard decision: Kyle and his wife had settled in New Haven, Missouri, and he and his wife wanted to start a family. Round trip, the St. Louis commute took him two hours and 40 minutes every day. His home was just down the street from Citizens Bank, and the commute was about 30 seconds long. He calls the switch the best decision he ever made.
Kyle had always worked with a larger bank, but he discovered that working for a small-town community bank is a little different. For Kyle, it meant feeling more invested in the community where he lives. Banking had been just a job for Kyle up to that point, but Gary saw it as a passion, and he encouraged Kyle to have the same attitude. Gary was involved in the community and looked every day for ways to make the bank a better place. During the 2007-2008 crisis, Gary always gave the bank first place in his mind and wanted to make sure he got the bank back to pre-crisis levels. “He really taught me his approach the best he could,” said Kyle.
Helping people within his community is the most rewarding part of Kyle’s career. “In small communities, the town bank is typically one of the biggest donors to charitable organizations,” said Kyle. “You work the concession stand at the Friday night football game, and you get involved in helping out at the fairs, festivals and church dinners. It all allows you to give back to the community.”
Kyle has learned three things that he would share with someone he was mentoring:
- Always have respect for your co-workers. Respect is not a given, it is earned, and you get respect by giving it. Keep your mind open and always entertain other people’s thoughts and ideas. They may have ideas or suggestions you hadn’t thought of about how to do things.
- Be patient and learn all aspects of banking you can. Graduating from college doesn’t mean you know everything about banking. Just try to learn as much as you can about all aspects of the bank, from working as a teller to working in the credit department, loan review, or working on financial investments, which is what I am doing now.
- Teamwork is a huge thing, so be a good teammate. You will be more successful. Teams can accomplish great things that would be harder to do as an individual.
Kyle sees several benefits of MIBA membership. The biggest benefit is the advocacy it gives members. “We have a united voice in Jefferson City when we take on important issues. That unity makes a great difference when we have a goal that we are wanting to accomplish,” he said.
MIBA is also important because of networking opportunities. “At the annual convention, you meet a lot of bankers dealing with the same issues. We act as sounding boards for each other. We talk together about our communities and the economy as a whole, and we pick each other’s brains for ideas about how to accomplish certain things,” he said. “Another valuable benefit in networking is loan participations. We can get other banks to participate in a loan when it is too big for one bank to handle. The customers don’t have to go to the big banks to get the financial help they need, and they can continue to do their banking within our communities. Networking goes back to the team aspect of banking. You become one big team working together on goals we all want.”
Kyle thinks the pandemic will have a continuing impact on banking. He said, “We had to use all our resources when the economy shut down, and the process caused us to look at the traditional banking model differently. As a result, traditional banking is not the gold standard anymore. We closed the lobby to keep everyone safe, put technology from the last few years to use, and still served our customers. For example, customers don’t have to sit across a desk to give us a signature anymore. They can e-sign instead. Our lobbies are open again, but we found new and different ways to do things. We are more efficient now.”
MIBA asked Kyle about what he does in his spare time. He said, “My wife and I have two children, so a lot of our time is spent with them as they go off to college and get their own start in life. We also like to hang out with friends and extended family. My wife and I do like to travel and take vacations to various parts of the United States. However, it never fails; every time we come home, we do realize how beautiful it is right where we live here in New Haven, Missouri. Some of my hobbies are hunting, fishing, and golfing.”
Kyle does not have a favorite book. He said, “My wife, who teaches fourth grade, reads more books than I do typically. I read the daily newspaper, and I really enjoy reading the sports page on Sunday morning in peace and quiet. I also like to read industry articles about how to improve the bank, whether it be about NIM, Efficiency Ratio, Investing or ALM.”
He does have a favorite quote. “Thomas Paine said, ‘Lead me, follow me, or get out of the way.’ General George S. Patton Jr. said the same thing, just less politely. I like the teamwork aspect of that quote. It’s about taking action and getting things done.”
When asked about his current bank, Peoples Savings Bank, he said, “We are a medium-sized community bank with $435 million in assets. The original 1935 charter was in Rhineland, Missouri, and it served farmers of the Rhineland Bottoms. The Great Flood of 1992 in Rhineland caused us to move our facility out of the bottoms. It also allowed us to look at moving the headquarters right across the Missouri river to Hermann, Missouri, which we did in 1995. Hermann is beautiful with its rolling hills, plus it’s wine country, and tourism is the largest industry. We are currently involved in 11 communities, from very rural ones to some larger communities, such as the St. Charles, Missouri, region. All our banks are very active in the communities in which they are located. In December 2020, we bought Clifford Bancshares Company (CBC) and added its four branches.”
