Southwest Georgia Bank’s Valdosta location is ready for business.

Southwest Georgia Bank’s headquarters are in nearby Moultrie and, according to its website, has branch locations in Baker, Thomas and Worth counties. And, now, the Valdosta branch.

“We started this project in February 2008 and we’ve had a presence (in Valdosta),” Al Howell, Valdosta division chief, said.

“Initially we opened a loan production office until we moved into this facility here. The loan production office did only loans, and now we have a full-service banking system.”

Howell says that the reason behind the new branch is that Southwest Georgia Bank is a community bank and Valdosta is the place to be.

“Well, Valdosta is the growth market in southwest Georgia,” Howell said. “The whole idea is this is a community bank. They wanted to stay in the South Georgia-North Florida community, something within 60 to 100 miles that they could manage and maintain a community bank, yet grow. You have to grow, if not, then you don’t have the economy as a scale to be profitable.”

The bank’s Moultrie headquarters picked Valdosta because of the city’s “healthy economy” compared to other places, Howell said.

“In good times, (Valdosta is) better than everybody else and in the bad times, it’s better than everybody else,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of competition here. However, I think with the people we have and the networks that they have in this town, we can get more of our share of the business and of course it’s a growing town.

“We wanted to grow in southwest Georgia. We didn’t want to go to Atlanta or Alabama, places that other banks have ventured. I think they suffered a lot because of the lack of knowledge of the market and the lack of ability to manage it because of the distance and that’s why they wanted to keep this close within our southwest Georgia community.”

According to Howell, the branch officially opened in June but only so that the bank’s team could get used to working together and working with the computer systems. He also had the opportunity to hire the staff himself from a clean slate.

“I got to go out and hire who I wanted,” Howell said. “I had 120 applications for five positions and most of them were very well qualified. I was looking for people who had experience in those particular positions and were successful in them. I was also looking at the diversity of their work background. I wanted people who were cross-disciplined. I wanted tellers that maybe had some customer-service experience and vice-versa so, if we needed to, we could cross over. I’m very happy with my team. Every time you work with people you have challenges. They want to do a very good job and are excited about meeting the customers.”

Since June, the team has been learning to work together so they could best serve the community.

While the bank is a branch of the Moultrie office, according to Howell, his new team are not strangers to Valdosta.

“Everybody here is from Valdosta and everybody here has worked in the Valdosta market their entire career,” he said. “So even though the bank is out of Moultrie, everybody here is from Valdosta so they should be familiar faces to people.”

Since opening, the bank has opened a lot of checking accounts but, Howell said, most of those were from relationships developed during the last two years through the loan production office.

Now, Southwest Georgia Bank has a little bit of everything.

“Most banking products are generic,” Howell said. “We offer a lot of the same things that everybody else can offer. It’s a matter at this point of how you can deliver it. I think I have a team in place that is trained and skilled with the desire to deliver with good efficiency, good quality service (and) good friendly service.”

Southwest Georgia Bank also has a lot of products that other local banks do not have, Howell added.

 “We have one of the only trust departments,” Howell said. “It’s not here in our banking center; however, we have a trust (department), so that (customers) can do any kind of trust, such as retirement trusts. They can also do stock trading. We have an investment advisor, who can do financial planning for you. We also have an insurance company that offers all varieties of commercial and personal insurance. They do group benefits. They do insurance for your house, your business, life insurance. They do all of that.”

But most of all, Howell wants people to know that the bank does have money to lend.

“We weren’t in the South Florida markets or the coastal markets and we weren’t in Atlanta,” he said. “We weren’t in the areas that the other banks were that were severely impacted by the recession. Consequently, they didn’t have liquidity or capital to lend. We were fortunate enough not to be in that situation. We have the cash, we have the capital and we have the ability to lend to good borrowers.”

Southwest Georgia Bank

Location: 3500 North Valdosta Road, Valdosta

Phone: (229) 244-4444

Hours: The lobby is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday. The drive-thru is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday.