BancorpSouth in Tupelo, Miss., is the latest bank to announce plans to scrap its holding company.
The $15 billion-asset company disclosed in a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the move, the bank would no longer be regulated by the Federal Reserve; it would still be supervised by the Mississippi Department of Banking and Consumer Finance and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
“A holding company structure is no longer needed to support our business activities,” Dan Rollins, BancorpSouth’s chairman and CEO, said in a release, adding that customers and staff would “not be impacted” by the change.
“This decision is reflective of our continuing commitment to improve the efficiency of our operations,” Rollins said. “We expect that the reorganization will eliminate redundant corporate infrastructure and activities and will help alleviate the burden of duplicative regulatory oversight.”
The decision comes shortly after Bank of the Ozarks in Little Rock, Ark., got rid of its holding company in what CEO George Gleason said was “purely an efficiency play.”
BancorpSouth has had a difficult time with regulators in recent years. The company withdrew applications to buy two banks in 2014 after regulators raised concerns over its compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act. Around that time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began conducting a review of the bank's fair-lending practices.
The BSA-related order was lifted in April 2015 and it seemed as though the acquisitions were back on track. But BancorpSouth
