With a desire to serve and a blessing from God, Sam Hall recently chartered the first Pike County financial institution to form in 20 years.
Hall, who is president and CEO of First Unity Federal Credit Union, said God encouraged him to provide financial services to Pike, Amite and Walthall counties.
“Adding the credit union more or less will bring an added feature to the underbanked and underserved,” he said. “A lot of things we plan on doing are not profitable for the banks to do. So we are going to pick up the void the banks won’t handle.”
In addition to providing needed services, Hall and his staff plan to treat their customers like a million bucks.
“We will have an atmosphere here where everybody is somebody,” Hall said. “We want to treat every customer like they’re somebody, regardless of how much you deposit.”
Hall, who has a bachelor of science in accounting from the University of Southern Mississippi and banking graduate degrees from Ole Miss and LSU, said he is well-equipped to run a financial institution.
“I’ve basically done everything in banking, from teller all the way up to commercial lending. I’ve done it all, he said.
He also noted First Unity has a top-notch accountant in Erica Brown.
The National Credit Union Administration approved the institution’s charter last June, and First Unity opened a few months after that.
With many smaller credit unions merging with bigger ones, Hall called First Unity’s charter “truly a blessing.”
While offering many of the same services, credit unions function differently than banks. With a credit union, the members also are the owners. Members buy a share of the company in the form of a savings account at First Unity.
“What I really like about the whole thing with credit unions is no one person has more ownership than anyone else,” Hall said. “Although I am the CEO, I have no more ownership than anybody else. I like that. Because we can truly say it’s owned by the members.”
Also, a bank’s profit goes straight to its shareholders, while a credit union gives back to its members, Hall said.
Profits are given back to members in the form of reduced loan rates and higher savings rates.
Currently, First Unity offers regular savings, club accounts, traveler’s checks, money orders, direct deposit, secured loans, savings bonds and more.
There is a $5,000 cap on loans right now, Hall said. As capitalization grows so will the loan limit.
However, those smaller loans are another way First Unity, which is federally insured, differentiates itself from bigger banks.
“Smaller loans are not that profitable to banks,” Hall said. “Banks over time have been trending away from those smaller type loans. We hope to fill that void. We can offer a good interest rate.”
Funding for First Unity was and still is a grassroots effort.
Fourteen religious organizations are listed as charter members, with individuals and businesses making up an additional 30 charter members. And Hall is again turning to those churches to help recruit more First Unity members.
“We are still in need of additional capital members,” he said. “Because the amount of capital will dictate how fast we grow and services we can offer.”
Although First Unity is still getting settled and looking for members, Hall has big plans for the future.
“Our goal is to provide all services the banks provide. But that’s down the road awhile,” he said. “We will eventually become a full-service financial institution.”
Hall said the relatively stable economic environment certainly doesn’t hurt a new financial institution. However, the area has always been somewhat immune to the peaks and valleys of the overall economical state.
“Primarily, Pike County has always been a healthy financial market,” he said. “Pike County has always had the reputation of being a conservative financial market. Because of that, we didn’t fall into a lot of bad markets other areas fell in to.”
First Unity Federal Credit Union is located at 122 Fifth Ave. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday.
