After 50 years, Holladay Bank becomes a Black-owned bank

In an age when customers do their banking on their phones, few young people have had the experience of walking into a local branch — something David Amott remembers well from childhood.

“Once a quarter, my mother would take me to the Holladay Bank to order new checks or undertake similar business,” Amott, former executive director of Preservation Utah, wrote in an email. “I didn’t mind these visits because the teller would always give me a lollipop before we left.”

Holladay Bank & Trust, which launched a half-century ago in Holladay, was acquired in June by Redemption Bank, becoming the first Black-owned bank in the Rockies.

Bank founder Ronald N. Spratling Jr. and his daughter Katie, the bank’s president since 2010, say the new ownership will carry on the community-driven service that has been the family’s legacy.

“We were the most unique bank around — I think we still are,” said Ronald Spratling Jr. “A lot of people do not like big banks. They just prefer small banks where they know people and people know them.”

Before launching Holladay Bank & Trust, Ronald Jr. served on an advisory board for a national bank. He’d often see documents for loan applications, filed by “good people” in the community who were “creditworthy,” he said. The banks rejected them anyway.

“A lot of times, it was a small loan,” he said. Banks “had a minimum. … Minimum on cars, minimum on houses, and if they were not in that category, the loan was a reject.”

Ronald Jr. knew the customers he wanted to attract. “I was going after the people other banks couldn’t or wouldn’t serve,” he said.

‘I’m putting my neck out’

Ronald Jr.’s father, Ronald N. Spratling Sr., owned Holladay Lumber, one of the biggest businesses in town, and tried unsuccessfully to start a bank in the 1960s, according to Katie Spratling.

In 1972, Ronald Jr. went to W. Smoot Brimhall, then the state’s commissioner of financial institutions, and applied to incorporate the Bank of Holladay. Ronald Jr. said he had $500,000 in capital, half of the $1 million Brimhall initially required.

Brimhall was a community banker himself, and was “sympathetic” to the proposal, Ronald Jr. said. Brimhall went against agency rules, according to Ronald Jr., and approved the bank — but Brimhall warned that Ronald Jr. would have to raise extra money if it showed losses after its first year.

Ronald Jr. said Brimhall told him: “I want you to know I’m putting my neck out. My staff thinks that we should stay with the million dollars, so make me look good.”

Ronald Jr. said he worked the first five years without pay. “I wore multiple hats — president, loan officer, legal counsel, personnel officer,” he said. “I was ‘it.’”

The original board of directors, which included Ronald Sr., supported the bank “really well” because they were local, Ronald Jr. said. So were the people he hired, which made the bank “unique,” he said.

Potential investors were skeptical, Ronald Jr. said, and some urged him to give up. At first, he asked for investors to put in $25,000 each, but that was too expensive for many — so he dropped the request to $500.

‘Temporary quarters’

The Bank of Holladay, now Holladay Bank & Trust, opened in March 1974, in what The Salt Lake Tribune reported at the time would be “temporary quarters” — a trailer, 12 feet by 50 feet. Ronald Jr. called it “fairly long and very efficient.”

Jan Rasmussen, whose mother was the bank’s first bookkeeper, remembers her mother’s stories of working in the white and tan trailer. “It was a regular-size trailer that sat where the bank is now,” Rasmussen said.

Traci Flynn, the bank’s current senior lending officer, said some older clients still mention the trailer when they visit the bank.

Staff used the trailer from March to November 1974, while the permanent HQ was constructed — a 5,000-square-foot building designed by Holladay architect Ken Stevenson, which is still the bank’s offices today.

Brimhall, the commissioner who stuck his neck out, took part in the ribbon cutting for the new building, the Murray Eagle reported at the time. Katie Spratling said the ribbon was made from currency — she was too young, she said, to notice if they were $1 bills or larger denominations — and that Brimhall had to cut the ribbon in a “specific place” between the bills.

The building features an open space with floor-to-ceiling windows, and geometrical lighting fixtures that beam soft, yellow-tinted light into the office.

Amott, the former head of Preservation Utah, said the bank shows the features of the mid-century modern style that was then in fashion. A mural above the tellers’ counters, painted by local artist Nan Conant from 1998 to 1999, features portraits of Ronald Jr. and the bank’s original board, along with moments in Holladay’s history.

By the end of its first year, the bank recorded a small profit. People in the community knew the Spratlings, Ronald Jr. said, and recommended the bank to their neighbors. (Ronald Jr. acknowledged that his Holladay law practice helped, too.)

In 1975, the bank had more than $6 million in assets, The Tribune reported. Seven years later, the bank’s assets exceeded $14 million.

The community and the competition

Ronald Jr. said he knew that for the bank to survive, having local folks behind the counter wasn’t enough. He needed loyal customers.

For starters, he offered one of the highest daily interest rates in Utah for passbook savings accounts and IRAs: 7.5% He also did something unusual for the era: He opened the bank on Saturdays.

“We were the only bank open on Saturday in this part [of Salt Lake County],” Ronald Jr. said. “Usually, the big banks were closed by 3 p.m. during the week.”

According to a 1978 Tribune article, Ronald Jr. once received a phone call from “one of the big boys” — a competitor who urged him to stay closed on Saturday.

The bank also did promotions, and employees focused on community events that made the bank part of Holladay’s fiber. There were barbecues, retirement parties for employees, free kids’ checking accounts and family photo portraits. At the bank’s Christmas parties, Rasmussen said, her father would come in to play the piano.

Success and transition

Ronald Spratling Jr. credits the bank’s success to the women who have worked there over the years. That includes Katie, who rose through the ranks and became president in 2010. Another daughter, Shelly, is the bank’s compliance officer, daughter Tori was the board’s secretary, and yet another daughter, Karin, served on the board for several years.

The “ladies,” as Ronald Jr. refers to them, showed their brilliance during the 2008 recession. At the time, nine community banks in Utah faced problems from land loans that went bad, he said, and “we were the only survivors, the only bank that survived on that list.” The rest, he said, either merged or were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Katie Spratling noted that the bank’s board, before the transition to Redemption Bank in June, had a majority of women. One of them was LaRae Orullian, the first president of Colorado’s Women’s Bank in the late 1970s — who went to Granite High School with Ronald Jr., Katie said.

Flynn said that Katie Spratling, who earned an accounting degree at the University of Utah, is the main reason Holladay Bank & Trust has been successful in the last 15 years, with current assets around $70 million.

“She’s not your typical stiff banker. She has the best laugh — you can hear her laugh from across the lobby, and you can’t help but smile,” Flynn said.

Flynn, who has been with Holladay Bank for 20 years, added that “banking in Utah is a male-dominated field and it’s a very corporate field and this has just been our safe space. … We are capable and competent, and we can do the job, but [here] we felt heard and appreciated.”

The “safe space,” Flynn said, extends to the customers. She mentioned hearing the bank’s operations officer, Pam Utterback, assisting a caller over the phone.

“They call, and Pam says, ‘Oh, I saw that you have a check coming through that wasn’t going to clear and I just wanted to let you know before I returned it,’” Flynn said. “You don’t get that anywhere else.”

Though the bank handles “big construction loans and big real estate loans,” Flynn said the “most rewarding” part of the job is helping small businesses. “My favorite loans are the small businesses that we helped when they couldn’t get help somewhere else and see them now thrive,” she said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Flynn said, Holladay Bank was one of the first in the state to approve loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). As a small community bank, she said, Holladay Bank could dive into applications right away.

From 2020 to 2021, the bank issued 123 PPP loans, totaling $7.25 million. The loans were as low as $3,000, Katie Spratling said, because that’s what customers needed. All 123 were paid back in full, Flynn said, with no indications of fraud — a widespread concern with PPP loans.

That success mirrors the bank’s track record with loans in general. For the past several years, Ronald Jr. said, the delinquency rate on the bank’s loans has been under 1%.

Redemption Bank’s acquisition of Holladay Bank & Trust, Flynn said, comes with more investments and “a lot of growth.” One improvement will be updated technology that Holladay hadn’t implemented due to “strategic reasons,” Flynn said.

There will be continuity, as Katie Spratling and all of Holladay Bank’s employees are staying on under the new ownership.

The Spratlings, father and daughter, are excited for what’s next — and what Redemption Bank and its co-founder, Ashley Bell, will bring to the community bank.

“Ashley’s vision for this bank continues [my dad’s] vision but in a different way,” Katie Spratling said. “It will further open the bank up to people that aren’t served by other banks.”