David Littlefield led organizers Jack Allen, Kent Harrell and me in an afternoon session to name the bank. After much work we came up with the name, Summit Bank and the tag line, “The Bank of Commerce”. We subsequently changed it to “Building Financial Relationships” after a session with Jack Allen discussing the importance of having the relationship of being a trusted advisor.

One of the challenges of establishing a new institution was selecting a logo. Danny Sadler freelanced the effort for us and came up with three alternatives, the first two of which were very cool. The third was “Sum It Bank 1 + 1 = 3”. I thought he was serious and wondered about Danny, but he later told me it was a joke.

The bank was born out of the days of 9/11. We obtained approval of the charter and investor offering circular on 9/11/2001. I was meeting for breakfast with future investor, Griff Jones, at BBD II and after 8am walked out of the restaurant and heard about the first plane flying into the World Trade Center. There was so much fear surrounding those events and the days and weeks following that we decided to postpone investor calls. Ultimately, we started making those contacts and even though it took much longer than it otherwise would have, we still raised the targeted amount.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, one of the first employees of the bank, Chris Creider, who predated the founding of the bank, was helping establish the loan administration functions along with other bank functions and getting us established with our back officer provider, Jack Henry and Associates. Our founding CFO also predated the bank formation and established the operational, financial and administrative functions. We are grateful to the organizers of the bank: Jack Allen, Kent Harrell, John Massey, John Neas, and John Williams, for joining me in writing the checks to fund this early work along with our legal and offering costs.

The first days and months were tough and with an initial employee base of eight, when someone was absent, we were down more than 10 percent of our workforce. We worked late and started early trying to stabilize operations. One of the worst times I remember was when one of our clients, Patricia Parks, was trying to have money wired to her Summit account via Chase Bank. Chase didn’t have a record of our transit routing number since we were a new charter. Patricia was wondering if we were really a bank.

It has been fun to watch our employee count, our leased space and our assets grow. It has been rewarding to have top talent join us over the years and they are the ones responsible for building this into the strong, profitable, clean bank it is today. We are also proud to boast of an outstanding board of directors and continued growth in our quality shareholder base. We have great clients who are a pleasure to serve. The culture has been built to make this a great place to work so everyone here wants to do his or her best to serve our clients.

We look forward to a bright future.