Our History
The institution known today as City Bank had its beginnings on August 2, 1941, in a small West Texas town when five men founded the First State Bank of Morton. The bank was originally capitalized with $129,335.48 . In spite of having an armed robbery and a major fire during its first five years, the bank's deposits climbed to over two million dollars. During the next ten years, the bank continued to grow and in May of 1957, moved into the present location of our Morton Branch.
On August 28, 1962, a group of local businessmen and farmers, including D. E. (Gene) Benham and our current Chairman's father, J. K. Griffith, purchased the bank from its founders. At that time the bank had just over four million dollars in assets. In 1988, the first branch was opened in Whiteface and in 1991, we acquired South Plains National Bank in Levelland. The acquisition of City Bank in Lubbock, in October of 1993 gave us our current name and an opportunity to reach a much larger market. By the end of 1994, our family of banks, including Morton, Whiteface, Levelland and Lubbock, had total assets of $200 million.
Through the visionary leadership of men such as Curtis Griffith, who became Chairman of the Board in 1984, and Mike Liner, who became the President in 1990, City Bank has experienced phenomenal growth. In January 2007, City Bank reached one billion three hundred million dollars in assets with 570 employees working in 38 locations across Texas. We proudly remain locally owned and operated. Our Employee Stock Ownership Plan is now our largest shareholder. Including the ESOP, nearly sixty-four percent of our stock is owned by the people who work here.
Our Focus
We began with a focus on agriculture in West Texas that remains vitally important today, but City Bank now serves the border community with two branches in El Paso, a cosmopolitan customer base in Plano, the growing suburbs east of Dallas from our Forney branch, and the Asian community across Texas with three branches in the Dallas area and one in Houston serving that segment of our diverse culture. (Our employees in these four branches collectively speak nine different languages enabling them to better serve our customers.) No matter what our customer base happens to be, our focus is always to deliver the same service excellence to every customer and our vision is to be the bank of choice in every community we serve.
Our Commitment
Our commitment to offering our customers revolutionary products and services has significantly contributed to our growth. We continually strive to stay in touch with our customers' needs and develop products and services that are responsive to those needs. Through this commitment, City Bank has added services including mortgage lending, trusts, insurance, investments, indirect lending and private banking. We always remain open to new ideas and new opportunities and have recently added mortgage lending offices in Abilene, Beaumont, College Station, Killeen and Tyler to our City Bank family.
City Bank was founded on the principle that happy and loyal employees create happy and loyal customers. Understanding what customers need and maximizing those relationships by providing it is the goal of every City Bank employee. Our philosophy of respecting and taking care of our employees is why we are able to hire and keep the best bankers anywhere. We are certain they are second to none.
One of our proudest distinctions is having City Bank named Number 16 among the Best Companies to Work for In Texas in 2007 by Texas Association of Business, The Texas State Council of the Society for Human Resource Management and the publishers of Texas Monthly. We give complete credit for this accomplishment to our valued employees that make up our City Bank family.
Our Mission
Our Employee Mission Statement, developed by and for the employees, shows the passion for service that comes from every one of us at City Bank:
Our Mission is to build long lasting relationships by delivering extraordinary financial solutions through unrivaled customer service…one customer at a time.
