With 30 percent of bank deposits in the Longview market, Texas Bank and Trust has continued to retain market dominance in an environment of increased competition and turbulence.

Rogers Pope Jr., president and chief operating officer of the 50-year-old Longview-based East Texas banking institution, credits the bank's continued growth to several factors.

The strong local economy, sticking to solid banking principles and a small army of staffers who take their jobs seriously and put customers first, have all made a difference, Pope said.

While banking has changed drastically in recent years with computerized online banking, automated teller machines, drive-through services and telephone banking services, Pope said the big difference from one bank to another is still its people.

"It all comes back to people," he said. "We may not have the biggest marketing budget but the one place we can be different is in the way our people provide customer service."

Pope said the 357 employees of Texas Bank and Trust form the foundation for its success.

"We have top notch personnel who are the cornerstone of what we do," he said. "We want to be the preferred place for our customers to bank and for our employees to work."

Texas Bank and Trust has maintained at least 30 percent of the Longview banking market share in each of the last three years, according to market share reports provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It has also led the way in Gregg County and a four-county area surrounding Longview.

According to the latest FDIC market share report released in October for the period ending June 30, Texas Bank and Trust not only has been the largest bank in Gregg, Harrison, Rusk and Upshur counties based on deposits in the five-year period between 2004 and 2008 \— it has also increased its share of the market.

"It all ultimately comes back to relationships," Pope said. "The industry is changing and will continue to do so. Technology is forcing change with the number of customers who do banking online and on their cell phones growing."

With ATMs, drive through lanes and other advances, maintaining market share is becoming more of a challenge.

"Technology is forcing changes," Pope said. "The challenges are to continue providing personal service while also providing those technical changes."

At the end of June 2004, Texas Bank and Trust had deposits in the four counties of $457.453 million. By June that figure had grown to $735.084 million.

In June 2004, the bank had 14.03 percent of the banking deposit market share. By this June, that percentage share had risen to 17 percent, FDIC reported.

"We are as strong as we have ever been," Pope said. While the rest of the nation goes through banking turmoil, Pope said much of Texas learned lessons from the bust of the 1980s when some state banks went under and hundreds of real estate transactions in Texas went belly up.

The next closest competition in deposit market share in the four-county area is Henderson-based Citizens National Bank with 12.24 percent of the market and $528.9 million in local deposits.

After Citizens come Chase Bank, with 8 percent of the four county deposit share; Austin Bank, with 6.7 percent; Regions Bank, with 6.59 percent; and Capital One, with 6.4 percent market share, according to the FDIC.

Looking to the future, Pope expects the bank's leadership and staff to continue using the same business basics. Those should bode well for Texas Bank and Trust in keeping and perhaps even growing, its dominant position in the Longview and East Texas markets.

Pope said the bank plans to expand its downtown Longview campus on property purchased earlier at the southeast corner of Whaley and First streets, where the former Sinclair-Lewis Building was located. The building was razed earlier in 2008.

"We're also always looking at other opportunities but have no definite plans at this time," he said. Among the potential growth locations could be a branch in Longview's northeast where new retail has located in the past few years.

"We expect Longview to continue to grow and do well economically," Pope said. "It's well positioned for future growth."