By Paige Nash
Things came full circle for President, Chairman and CEO of Home Federal Bank (HFB) Jim Barlow as they held the bank’s official ground-breaking ceremony this past Thursday, June 27. This future location at 410 Homer Road will be the eleventh full-service HFB in Northwest Louisiana.
“On a personal note, this is very special for me,” said Barlow. “Expanding into Minden actually brings my career full circle. When I graduated from Glenbrook, I went to Louisiana Tech and found out fairly quickly, maybe with a little push from my dad, that I needed a part-time job to earn college expense money. So, I took a part-time job at a bank and who would know that 34 years later I would have a banking career that would bring me back to Minden, my hometown, and put up a facility like this?”
HFB has been serving customers in Northwest Louisiana for 100 years.
“That means we have survived the Great Depression in the 30s, World War II in the 1940s, the Savings and Loan Crisis in the 1980s, more recently the Great Recession, which I am sure all of us personally lived through,” said Barlow. “That means we are strong and stable, and we can weather any economic circumstances that are currently happening today.”
HFB is also the only publicly traded company headquartered in Northwest Louisiana and listed on a major stock exchange.
Barlow said, “There are a lot of benefits of being a publicly traded company. One of them is that we can actually go to Wall Street and bring capital back to Main Street or in this case Homer Road.”
Since establishing their temporary location in Park City, HFB has been able to invest in organizations such as the Greater Minden Chamber, Minden Charity Classic, as well as a couple of local high schools.
“It’s a pretty simple equation for us at HFB. Keeping money locally makes for strong businesses and strong businesses make for strong communities,” said Barlow.
All HFB locations offer a wide range of services including commercial and small-business loans, home mortgage loans, consumer lending, deposit accounts, 24-hour ATM and drive-through teller windows.
Barlow mentioned that he hoped they would be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Homer Road location in the coming months, but until then you can receive friendly and knowledgeable service at the temporary location at 306 Homer Road.
