The Bank was organized as a mutual savings and loan association, or “thrift,”
for the primary purpose of promoting home ownership through mortgage lending,
financed by locally gathered deposits. Surviving the Great Depression of the
1930’s, we remained a single-office bank until we opened a second office
in downtown Murphy, North Carolina in 1981. Between 1993 and 2002, we added
eight more branches in North Carolina, including a second office in Franklin,
one in each of Highlands, Brevard, Sylva, Cashiers and Arden, and two in Hendersonville.
In 2007, we opened two more branches in Columbus and Saluda, North Carolina.
During 2015, we opened a branch location in Greenville, South Carolina and purchased
two branches in Anderson and Chesnee, South Carolina.
We currently have 14 branches located throughout the western North Carolina
counties of Cherokee, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Polk and Transylvania and the
Upstate South Carolina counties of Anderson, Greenville, and Spartanburg, which
we consider our primary market area. We also regularly extend loans to customers
located in neighboring counties, including Buncombe, Clay, Haywood, Rutherford
and Swain in North Carolina; Fannin, Rabun, Towns and Union in Georgia; and
Cherokee, Oconee, and Pickens in South Carolina, which we consider our secondary
market area.
The primary economic drivers of our primary market area in North Carolina are
tourism and a vacation and retirement home industry. This area has numerous
small- to mid-sized businesses, which are our primary business customers. These
businesses include agricultural producers, artisans and specialty craft manufacturers,
small industrial manufacturers, and a variety of service oriented industries.
The largest employers in Macon County include Drake Software, a national tax
software provider, based in Franklin.
Our primary market area in South Carolina is economically diverse with major
industries including the automobile industry, health and pharmaceuticals, manufacturing,
and academic institutions. Located adjacent to major transportation corridors
such as Interstates 85 and 26 and centrally located between Charlotte, North
Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia, the Upstate South Carolina market is consistently
recognized nationally as an area for business growth and relocation.
