Banker reaching by teaching
Southern Bancorp CEO finds his place in poverty fight
Just one remarkably memorable event in Darrin Williams’ lifetime, in this case flying into his hometown on Air Force One with the president of the United States, Williams’ wife and 6-monthold child on board, for a national celebration to recognize the Little Rock Nine and the 40th anniversary of the desegregation of Central High in Little Rock, would probably be enough for most folks.
Williams has a closet full of such memorable encounters not unlike that leading up to his current role as chief executive officer of Little Rock’s Southern Bancorp, a $2.5 billion institution with plans to double that over the next five years.
The memorable moments include working with peers at Central High School to persuade the Little Rock School Board to allow Jesse Jackson, a hot-potato civil rights leader who already had campaigned for the presidency, to speak to a school assembly in the mid-1980s despite fierce community opposition. The mindset of a crusader was established early and lasts through today. “We knew it wasn’t right and it was up to us to do something about it,” Williams recalls.
Williams also recounts being nestled on a couch between warriors of the decades-long struggle for Black equality: poet and author Maya Angelou, who years later would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Doug Wilder, the first Black governor of Virginia. Williams was relentless and ambitious, and loved to talk about it. “I’m sure I was wearing Wilder out with all the things I had done and all the things I wanted to do,”
Williams says.
Calm down, young man, Wilder counseled, and let patience deliver its perfect work. “That’s advice I’ve never forgotten,” Williams says. “He was telling me to make sure I order my steps.”
Then there was the time Williams and his wife, Nicole, were leading a financial training course for couples based on Biblical principles. In church one day, a man and his wife who had taken the class, pulled Williams aside to say they learned enough to buy their first home. “I just thought that was so cool,” Williams recalls. “I told my wife that if I could do anything I wanted, I just wanted to help people who didn’t know anything about money. It was tremendously rewarding.”
Another landmark event: being invited to lunch in the fall of 2012 by Systematics Inc. founder Walter Smiley, who also helped start Southern and was then chairman of the holding company’s board, and Sherman Tate, a longtime leading Little Rock business figure who served as chairman of the bank board.
The lunch invitation was a job offer to lead the bank as chief executive officer.
“I had never heard of Southern Bancorp,” Williams recalls. He said no but eventually joined the board. “I knew about their lending company and that they worked with poor people — that was about it.”
Williams has sterling accomplishments: state legislator leading banking reforms to protect the poor, leadership role at the Democratic National Committee, general counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, leading Mark Pryor’s campaign to win back the U.S. Senate seat his father held for nearly two decades. He appears frequently on national television as an expert commentator on the financial sector.
Davy Carter, the first Republican Speaker of the State House of Representatives in Arkansas history, says his friend “has got ‘it’” — charisma, the smarts, experience and credentials. They served in the Legislature together and Williams played a key role in swaying fellow Democrats to back Carter after a bid by Williams for the speaker’s chair was blockaded by legislators who didn’t want a Black man in the job, Williams said.
“Darrin has a special presence that draws people to him. He’s extremely intelligent, articulate and passionate,” says Carter, who is the regional president at Centennial Bank in Jonesboro. “In the Legislature, Darrin’s voice was powerful. In our last legislative session together there were some tense times in the House Chamber, particularly around health care and a few other controversial issues. Darrin’s leadership was critical to the process.”
All those accomplishments, and the man still can apparently sack a mean bag of groceries. Mark Pryor, now a lobbyist in the nation’s capital, tells the story.
“He has a work ethic that would put most people to shame,” Pryor said. “One time he told me he had a high school job as a Kroger grocery sacker. As an adult, he was checking out at Kroger and the sacker was being careless about sacking Darrin’s groceries. So, Darrin stopped what he was doing and demonstrated to the young man how to properly sack groceries.”
That is Darrin Williams: He’s not going to get angry or upset because you don’t do something right — perhaps you’ve never been taught properly; he’s going to teach and show you the right way to do it.
And Williams brings the same approach today as Southern’s CEO, putting into practice that basic desire to lift folks in low-income communities who don’t know anything about money or saving and borrowing and budgeting.
It’s been quite a journey for the 55-year-old, who is a self-confessed master networker. “I knew early on the power of networking,” he said. “I had no idea a lot of times how it would help me, but I always had an angle to meet people. And, eventually, all of that has come back to pay dividends in my life.”
Back to that lunch with Walter Smiley and Sherman Tate.
It took a week or so for Williams to tell his wife about the meeting and the job offer. She realized instantly that Williams’ entire career had prepared him for the role. “She said something real simple — reminding me of the time when I said the job I wanted was to help poor people,” Williams said. “She told me that this was it — that God had prepared me for this job. All I could say was, ‘Wow.’ I’m so thankful to my wife because I didn’t see it.”
Like Wilder in the early days, Nicole’s advice was straightforward and insightful: it was time for Williams to order his steps. He accepted the role at Southern in February 2013.
He’s accomplished much in his first decade at Southern by attracting more than $50 million in equity capital, increasing its assets by $900 million and expanding Southern’s geographic footprint and product offerings.
And he’s led the bank into the national spotlight.
Williams was invited by the White House in April 2020 to participate in a small forum for the nation’s financial leaders to share their experience supporting small businesses during the pandemic. That led to an opportunity to work with the Trump administration to carve out a piece of the multi-billion-dollar Paycheck Protection Program for exclusive use by Community Development Financial Institutions such as Southern.
Community Development Financial Institutions focus on community development in underserved and poor communities with little, if any, access to banking services. They can offer lower interest loans in those areas to spark business and job growth.
With a Master of Law degree and experience in public financing, Williams has leaned on that knowledge to simplify Southern’s capital structure, create a mechanism that continues to provide all shareholders with regular quarterly dividends and altered Southern’s legal structure to ensure protection of its mission to help the underserved and neglected.
Williams says he’s not done. Today, his focus is on continuing to expand the bank’s presence beyond the Delta communities Southern serves in Arkansas and Mississippi. The goal is to doubling assets to $5 billion in the next five years.
“Helping people is the heart of what we do at Southern,” Williams said, noting he’s well aware of the balance the CEO role demands: providing financial education and services to poor communities while generating returns for shareholders. “Service is what we do — we help people in places where there’s not much opportunity.”
One of Southern’s newest branches, on 12th Street in Little Rock, is indicative of the bank’s goals going forward: build in communities more traditional lenders have deserted. Including the 12th Street office, there are only four banks south of Interstate-630 compared with 15 institutions, some with multiple branches, serving the 72223 ZIP code covering parts of Chenal and the west Pulaski County, federal statistics show.
Moving forward, Southern plans to expand its footprint in a similar fashion, setting up offices and providing financial education services in communities traditional banks avoid. “The focus and center of all that is building family financial wealth,” Williams said. “And we are on a mission to do that.”