As a fifth-generation banker, Mark Jenkins is proud to carry forward a long-held family tradition of caring for the community.
Mark’s great-great-grandfather, Irving Jenkins, helped start the Citizens Bank of Sparta in 1919 as a primary investor. Mark’s great-grandfather, Harvey Jenkins, worked there as well, serving as the bank president and as a cashier. Mark’s grandfather, James I. Jenkins, started working at the bank in 1935. Mark’s father, James R. Jenkins, started working at the bank in 1970 after he got back from Vietnam.
Mark was born in 1974 and was raised on a small farm in the close-knit community of Sparta. During the time he attended Sparta High School, he could often be seen mowing the lawn at the bank and doing odd jobs like shredding paper. Mark attended Southwest Baptist University, located only about an hour away from Sparta. During this time, Mark started working as a teller at the bank, then as a bookkeeper and then on to loan processing. Upon graduating with an accounting degree, he stepped into the role of a loan officer.
“My path to banking was made easy for me. My parents never pressured me to go into banking. They simply told me if I wanted a job, the opportunity would be there,” Mark recalled. “At one point, I worked with my dad, my grandfather, my uncle, a great aunt and a couple of cousins. If you called the bank and asked for Mr. Jenkins, you could have gotten any one of many Mr. Jenkins.”
Mark has many fond memories of working with his father, but perhaps one of his favorites was from early on in his career. “My office was an old boardroom that had been partitioned off with glass windows that made a wall. My dad sat in the office next to me and our desks faced each other,” Mark recalled. “As I would be interviewing or talking to a customer, I could look over their shoulder and see my dad in the background giving me the thumbs up or thumbs down based how I should proceed with a customer.” The number one thing Mark’s father emphasized was integrity and honesty. “They are the pillars of what it means to be a banker; if you don’t have your integrity, you don’t have anything,” his father would say.
When Mark’s grandfather passed away in 2002, the banks’ outside shareholders wanted to sell their shares. Efforts were made to form a holding company, but a few holdouts wouldn’t allow it to go through unless an agreement was signed guaranteeing conditions on the multiple of book they would receive upon the eventual sale of their shares. This ultimately forced the bank to be sold. “I ended up leaving the bank and went to work for Jack Henry for about six months on a traveling conversion team,” Mark said. “Trying to raise a family while traveling wasn’t the best logistically move for me.” Mark called, Frank Hilton, who worked at Citizens National Bank, and asked if they had any job openings, and they did — Citizens National Bank was getting ready to open a new branch in Ozark, which was where I lived.”
Mark worked there from 2005 to 2010 when they sold to Empire Bank. Most of the lenders were laid off during that merger, and Mark found himself looking for a job once again. He ended up going to work at Systematic Savings Bank in downtown Springfield.
Systematic Savings Bank was an old savings and loan that was in the process of converting to a bank. “They brought me on to help get them converted over. At that point, they didn’t have anything but fixed-rate loans and CDs. They didn’t have checking accounts, debit cards or ATMs,” Mark said. “I set them up with standard policies for all different types of loans, implemented debit cards, checking accounts and savings accounts — basically, all the different types of accounts that a traditional community bank would have.”
A year-and-a-half later, Mark received a call from a recruiter telling him about an opportunity at Bank of Billings. Mark told him that he already had a job. With great insistence, the recruiter told him, “You need to look at this position.” The Bank of Billings had been without a president for a while and was in some trouble.
Mark rose to the challenge and came on as president of Bank of Billings in 2012. He got to work cleaning things up, and in no time, the bank was profitable and in good shape. “We run a pretty clean ship,” Mark said. “We’ve been in a growth mode over the last 13 years. When I came to the bank, we were just over $50 million in size, and now we’re at $95 million. We’ve had steady growth.”
Outside of the office, it is important for Mark to give back to his community. He is actively involved with the Show Me Christian County Economic Development. He recently served a three-year term on the Ozark School Board and is actively involved in the Ozarks Sertoma Club. Sertoma is an acronym, meaning “SERvice TO MAnkind.” The main beneficiary of their fundraising efforts is the Boys and Girls Club of Springfield. Mark is a member of the local Lions Club and is active in his local church congregation.
Mark has learned so much throughout his career, and sharing that knowledge through teaching opportunities and presentations. Recently teaching a lending school session through the Missouri Bankers Association, and “I’m getting ready to teach a fraud prevention presentation to an elderly group at church,” Mark said. “My mom never had to deal with finances until my dad passed away two and a half years ago. She was taken advantage of through a fraudulent phone call and asked if I could come share information to a group of her friends so the same thing does not happen to them.”
As chair of MIBA’s Legislative Committee, Mark welcomes the opportunity to do more to help shine a spotlight on issues like these. A good example is SB 99, which creates new provisions to prevent fraudulent activity on bank accounts, currently on Gov. Mike Kehoe’s desk awaiting his signature. If this bill were enacted, Mark would have been notified by his mother’s banker about the suspected fraud. “Legislation has not caught up to today’s problems. We are leaving huge segments of our community vulnerable,” Mark said. “In addition to stronger laws, our industry needs to do a better job at outreach and education when it comes to the communities we serve.” He is also serving on the Executive Conference Committee with the Missouri Bankers Association, and is involved with banker visits to Washington D.C. to have discussions with regulators and legislators.
Mark and his lovely wife, Jennifer, have been married for 26 years this September. They have two children: Madeline and Luke. Madeline is 23 and currently teaches 7th-grade history at Ozark Junior High School. Luke is 19 and is getting ready to attend MSU in Springfield this fall. Luke plans on getting his accounting degree and a CPA license.
Both children have spent time working in the bank with their father, learning about the industry and what it takes to be a community banker. The Jenkins family legacy is being carried forward with a sixth generation of bankers.
