community banking. Retention matters in markets where relationships drive business decisions, and customers often work with the same loan officers and tellers for years. The ESOP model gives employees reasons to stay beyond salary considerations.“We’ve never had issues with that,” Wolfe notes about the compensation structure. Across the banking industry, 91 percent of bankers expressed optimism for the future in 2025 despite ongoing challenges, yet turnover remains a concern for institutions competing with larger banks for talent. United Bank & Trust’s ownership culture provides a differentiator in tight labor markets. STRATEGIC EXPANSION IN KANSAS United Bank & Trust’s 21-year history shows steady, organic growth, but Wolfe sees opportunities to accelerate expansion through strategic acquisitions. “We’d like to grow. We’ve always been in somewhat of a growth mode. It’s been a slow and mostly organic growth over the 20 years that we’ve been United Bank and Trust, but we’re always looking at opportunities, maybe not once a month, but certainly at least every quarter there’s opportunities to expand or acquire,” Wolfe says. The bank’s board discussed these possibilities at their most recent meeting. “We have 12 percent of the tangible equity capital at the bank level. That’s way more capital than we need, and we’d like to put that money to work by acquiring another bank or two or three locations,” Wolfe explains. Geographic considerations inform acquisition strategy. All current United Bank & Trust locations sit in contiguous counties, creating operational 135 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 12, ISSUE 11 UNITED BANK & TRUST
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI5MjAx