The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

Northwest Oklahoma 1

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March 6, 2010

Banking on the future

Farmers Exchange Bank sees good times amid challenges

By Joe Malan, Staff Writer Enid News and Eagle

CHEROKEE — Up and down times, but much less down times.

That’s how Loren Rieger would describe his 28 years at Farmers Exchange Bank in Cherokee.

Some of the down times have been particularly challenging for Rieger and employees of the bank.

“Of course, I’ve only been here since the early ’80s, so the challenges we’ve gone through in the time I’ve (been) here is the oil bust and ag problems in the mid-80s,” said Rieger, president and chief executive officer, who reminisced about the challenges the bank has faced in his years of service.

Rieger started working at the bank in 1982, only six months before the failure of Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City and the subsequent oil bust.

“So far that’s been our biggest challenge since I’ve been here,” Rieger said.

Feb. 14 marked 75 years since the bank’s founding in 1935.

Since then, the bank has expanded across northwest Oklahoma to open branches in Tonkawa in 1996 and Wakita and Helena in 2003.

Farmers Exchange Bank now serves 3,000 bankers in Alfalfa County, alone, and up to 4,000 to 4,500 company-wide.

Rieger believes banks in northwest Oklahoma have remained profitable, even in the face of the ongoing economic recession.

“It’s been (mainly) a Wall Street problem,” he said.

Besides the current recession and the oil bust in the 1980s, one of the other obstacles the bank faced was in 1985, when a fire caused a temporary relocation.

“That took about nine months to do,” Rieger said. “That was an unsettling time.”

But he’s had plenty of good memories, too.

When Rieger started working at the bank in 1982, he met Clarke Dunnington, who was the current president.

Dunnington was 73 years old at the time and had been working at the bank since he was 18.

“I’ve learned (the most) about banking from Clarke Dunnington,” Rieger said. “I learned more from him than I had going to school pursuing a finance degree.”

Today, Farmers Exchange Bank continues to grow in financial size. However, the customer base has remained fairly static, Rieger said.

“We live in a rural area that’s struggling to keep people here,” Rieger said. “Young people grow up, they leave and they go to school and get a job (somewhere else).”

But Rieger is optimistic about the bank’s future.

“There’s always going to be X number of acres out there to farm,” he said.

“We’re still going to here.”

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