James A. Sammons may well be the chief executive officer of America’s smallest bank. With $3 million in assets, Kentland Federal Savings and Loan is definitely the smallest member of the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), a trade organization for small banks. If you Google “smallest bank in America,” you’ll see stories about a Michigan bank with $700,000 in assets (it got bought in 2007) and a Texas bank with $2 million in deposits (acquired in 2017). 1 Perhaps most definitively, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was able to verify that, yes, Kentland does indeed have the smallest asset base of any federally insured bank in the country.
Beyond its size, Kentland Federal Savings and Loan is unusual in other ways. It has one location, in Kentland, Indiana (population 1,641), no ATMs and no website. There are basically two things you can do as a customer of the bank: obtain a home mortgage or open a savings account or a CD. And when you do either, it will all be—quite literally—paperwork. Sammons, the fourth generation of his family to run the 100-plus-year-old S&L and its only full-time employee, confides that he’s a bit tech-averse. “Computers are great when they work,” says the 55-year-old, laughing. “I don’t have the patience for them.”
