Oklahoma: A Story Through Her People

In addition, Hill was named a finalist for
Most Admired CEO in Oklahoma (2012);
and Bank2 was named one of Oklahoma’s
Top Work Places (2013).
At Bank2’s first strategic planning meeting
in 2001, Hill asked Governor Anoatubby to
share his vision for the bank. “The board had
been considering locating the bank in Ada
or Ardmore, Oklahoma, and had hoped that
it might grow to about $58 million in total
assets after about ten years.
“When Governor addressed the board, he
cast a huge vision in comparison to that of the
board, saying he hoped the bank would have
a national footprint,” Hill recalls. “Less than
eight years later, we had achieved his vision,
and had made loans in forty-six states across
the country.”
Neal McCaleb was steering committee
chairman for the bank’s formation. When
McCaleb was appointed by President Bush
in 2001 as Deputy Secretary of the Interior,
he had to resign his position with Bank2’s
formation steering committee. At Governor
Anoatubby’s request, Tom Cole replaced
McCaleb on the board, serving until he was
elected to Congress about two years later.
McCaleb completed his duties in Washington
about the same time, and was named to
succeed Cole on the bank’s board.
After the board’s extensive efforts to find a
bank name that could be trademarked, Hill
thought of calling it Bank2, though he saw
the “2” superscripted. “Each time I showed
it to anyone with a math or science background,
they read the name as ‘Bank
Squared,’” he says. “I sure didn’t want that as
our name, so we made the “2” very, very large
and added the line, ‘Twice the Bank.’ That
name met with immediate public acceptance,
and now has a national trademark to go along
with our national presence. I sometimes get
asked if we are part of Bank One or BancFirst,
I say, ‘No, they are half the bank, we are twice
the bank.’”
Because of Bank2’s conservative business
approach, it actually flourished during the
great recession that saw many others reporting
large losses. This led to the American Banking
Journal’s naming Bank2 as one of the top ranking
community banks in 2009 and 2010.
“The bank’s sixty-three employees care
about the customers,” Hill says, relating the
story of a customer whose cars had to be
repossessed when they got behind on their
loans. The borrower called to explain that his
wife had terminal cancer and could no longer
work. The high school-age daughter now had
to get up to drive her dad to work, then attend
class till lunch, at which time she drove home
to help her mother, fix dinner, and pick up her
dad at work. She then worked from 6-10 p.m.,
only to repeat the sequence the next day.
When the loan committee recounted this story
to bank employees and asked for donations
to pay off the family’s car loan, employees not
only paid the loan, but also bought the family’s
Thanksgiving dinner, in keeping with the bank’s
mission statement, “Building Better Lives.”
Bank2 sent two employees to help with
relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy whipped
through New Jersey and New York. These
volunteers helped clean mud from houses,
prepared and served meals to victims, and
again embodied the bank’s mission statement.
Employees recently donated over $60,000
to drill water wells in emerging countries after
hearing an estimate that 5,000 children under
age five die daily from water-borne diseases.
Bank2 joined an OKC nonprofit, Water4 to
help eradicate this problem by providing safe,
clean water. In January of 2014, two Bank2
Above: Helping Native Americans with
home loans.
Below: Cleaning mud out of houses in
New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.
O K L A H O M A P A R T N E R S
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