FortuneBank is merging with Southern Bank, said Dan Jones, Fortune’s founder, chairman and CEO.
Jones established the community bank in 2005 at 3494 Jeffco Blvd. in Arnold and expanded into south St. Louis County in 2016 with a location at 6121 Telegraph Road in Oakville.
Jones said a merger with Southern Bank of Poplar Bluff is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2022.
“This is a win for our customers, employees and shareholders,” Jones said. “It gives me a lot of peace that as the Fortune chapter changes and becomes the Southern chapter, that it is a good outcome for everyone involved.”
After the merger with FortuneBank, Southern Bank will grow to 53 locations in Missouri, Illinois and Arkansas.
Jones said the decision was made to merge so FortuneBank could offer more modern and evolving services.
“Traditional banking is on the cusp of significant changes with the reliance on digital currencies and increasing reliance on fintech products and services (technology used to support or enable banking and financial services),” he said. “It seemed logical that we partner with someone who has the scale and some of those things in existence because I see this change coming rapidly.”
Jones said customers will have access to more online banking resources after the merger.
“There are two groups of people in the world who bank now, the older group and the younger group,” he said. “The older group wants to come into a traditional bank and make a deposit at the teller window like they have for the past 50 years.
“The younger generation do not need to come to a bank. They want to do all of their banking on their phone or their computer. As the evolution continues, that younger generation is going to require more technological advances so they can do banking from their phone. That is the dichotomy of where banking is heading, and therefore having access to those products and services now versus it taking us years to gain access to them as a small bank, it gives us a boost forward in this evolution that is taking place.”
Jones, 56, said he recently moved to Town and Country but before that had lived in Arnold since 1988.
Jones said that after the merger, he will continue to operate the bank as the market chairman for Southern Bank’s north region, which will be the St. Louis area. He also said current Fortune employees will be able to keep their jobs after the merger.
“The only thing that will physically change is the name and the logo,” he said. “We don’t want anyone to think there will be significant changes. We will still be a community bank. That was important to me as I met with (Southern’s) leadership team. Even though they are $3 billion in size, they still have community banking at their core. We can gain this scale without giving up that community bank presence, interaction and environment. It is very important to me that we still act in every way as a community bank after the merger takes place.”