The Story of Ken Hale and BOM Bank

In 1994, Ken Hale inherited a third of his grandfather’s 55 percent stake in the Bank of Montgomery, Louisiana. The bank’s namesake town of about 600 residents is situated on a bend in the Red River, halfway up the state and forty miles from the border with Texas. It had a single location and $18 million in assets when Ken joined the bank right out of college the next year.

Today, Ken owns 40 percent of the renamed and much larger, BOM Bank, which has grown to twenty-five branches and $1.5 billion in assets. Over the past fifteen years, BOM has earned an average return on assets of 1.5 percent even though most of its footprint is in persistent poverty counties — counties which have experienced heightened poverty for thirty years.

It provides another example — with M&T Bank, Glacier Bank and others — that a well-run bank can find respectable growth and profitability under even the most inhospitable conditions.

The video that accompanies this text walks through the day I spent last week with Ken. It tells his story — and also the stories of BOM Bank and banking in rural Louisiana.