Jack E. Hopkins and CorTrust Bank share key qualities: resiliency, a down-to-earth authenticity and deep roots in their small-town origins. Hopkins’ father and grandfather nurtured both him and their family-owned bank, setting them on a successful path.
Hopkins, in turn, has advanced CorTrust Bank, bringing it to new markets and tripling its asset size. As the incoming ICBA chairman, the president and CEO of the $1.5 billion-asset community bank plans to use his boots-on-the-ground work ethic to benefit his bank and the industry as a whole. But like many community bankers, he started small to get where he is now.
Artesian, S.D., and beyond
While CorTrust Bank’s headquarters is in Sioux Falls, the community bank got its start in Hopkins’ agricultural hometown of Artesian, S.D., current population 135. To this day, it’s the only bank in town.
Hopkins is the third generation to lead CorTrust Bank. Initially, he wasn’t sure banking was his calling. When he headed off to college at the University of South Dakota at the onset of the ’80s, the industry wasn’t primed for aspiring bankers. Inflation and interest rates were rising dramatically, and banks were failing.
Hopkins says this era “wasn’t the best time to be in banking, particularly in a rural area like where I grew up. It was a tough time in banking, so I was not sure that I wanted to do that.”
Nevertheless, he spent his college summers working at CorTrust, learning the ins and outs from the back office to the teller line. By the time he got his degree in business and accounting, Hopkins had also interned at one of the “big eight” accounting firms out of Minneapolis. A job with that firm was on the table, but it wasn’t a fit for Hopkins. “They were going to put me on the road for 98% of the time for my first two years,” he says. “I was getting married, and I thought that wasn’t probably a good way to start a marriage if I was gone 98% of the time.”
Instead, he and Gina, his wife and CorTrust’s eventual VP of facilities, settled in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. This decision would cement his career path. There, he worked as a controller for a local community bank, The Roseville Bank, until its sale four and a half years later.
With that sale came an ultimatum: Hopkins would have to move to Milwaukee. “I wasn’t really all that interested in moving to Milwaukee,” he chuckles, “so I was also offered a position back at [my family’s bank] and got out.”
Starting in 1988, Hopkins served as vice president of lending at the Webster, S.D., branch, then moved to vice president at the Yankton and Tabor, S.D., branches. In 1993, Hopkins was named SVP and moved, along with a bank expansion, into Sioux Falls, S.D., where he oversaw the opening of five locations. Hopkins was promoted to executive vice president in 1996, then took over as CEO and president at the end of 2004 when his father stepped down.
Breaking new ground
Hopkins soon spotted opportunities to expand CorTrust’s footprint. “As we diversified into Sioux Falls and some of the other larger communities in South Dakota after the agricultural crisis, we’ve tried to get a little more of a balance between commercial real estate, agricultural real estate and consumer lending,” he says. “Part of the diversification strategy was to get geographically dispersed as well, so that if an area suffers from maybe a recessionary event, we don’t have that in all of our markets.”
Minnesota left an impression on Hopkins, and when the opportunity came to expand there, he took it. In 2009, CorTrust Bank acquired a failed bank in Woodbury, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb. This spurred a series of moves that would solidify the bank’s presence in the state. CorTrust bought three more Minnesota banks in 2013, 2018 and 2019.
When Hopkins first took the top job, CorTrust Bank had $375 million in assets and 22 branch locations exclusively in South Dakota. The expansion into Minnesota brought 15 new branches, which have contributed significantly to its current asset size.
But the timing of its most recent acquisition in 2019, says Hopkins, gave him the biggest challenge of his career. COVID-19 broke out soon after the deal was finalized.
“You had a lot of challenges during [COVID] that were really stressful,” he says. “That’s to say, I didn’t have gray hair before then, but I did after that.” Like many community banks, CorTrust went all in on technology during that time, adding capabilities such as e-sign and virtual training.
Hopkins and his team also had to navigate the ownership transition and comfort nervous staff who were unfamiliar with CorTrust’s way of working. Hopkins took this as an opportunity to establish trust with these new employees and maintain open lines of communication.
Rallying around community
Nurturing connections among staff and the community has always been a core value of CorTrust. “I hire good people, and I think I’ve got a really good staff,” Hopkins says. “Banking is all about relationships, and my staff does a phenomenal job of going out and building relationships with people. [Customers] know they’re there for them in the hard times and the good.”
Through CorTrust Cares, an internal initiative encouraging service projects and volunteering, the bank is making a difference in each community it serves. Each market rotates a team member who decides which volunteering, projects and donations the bank takes on, meaning everything is locally focused, Hopkins explains.
“We strongly encourage that; we give [staff] the time off to do it,” he says. “We support it financially, and we try to stay true to our mission, which is helping the communities we live in.”
For example, CorTrust has supported local children’s hospitals and nonprofits, such as Sioux Falls’ LifeScape and the Children’s Home Society. LifeScape offers services for children and adults with disabilities and medical rehabilitation needs, and Children’s Home Society works with children who have experienced domestic violence, abuse, neglect or traumatic events. Staff members have also participated in volunteer efforts for Habitat for Humanity and Toys for Tots. From small South Dakota towns to the Twin Cities, CorTrust works to serve and meet the unique needs of its communities.
Leading by example
Hopkins is a leader who walks the walk (see sidebar below). He intends to keep this energy during his term as ICBA chairman in 2025/26.
Always putting in the work
Jack E. Hopkins goes way back with some of his colleagues at CorTrust Bank. “Jack and I are the same age and competed against each other in high school basketball,” says CFO Jeff Smith. “We were friends and attended the same college at University of South Dakota. Jack is a great president and CEO and leads by example. No one puts in more hours than him, which leads to the success of our bank.”
According to Hopkins’ colleagues, he’s not one to shy away from hard work. “There is no job too big or small that Jack would not do himself,” says Roger Weber, Sioux Falls market president. “This is reflected in his respect for all roles within the bank and the personal way Jack and the Hopkins family cares for staff.”
His leadership style is all about being authentic and adaptable, says Hopkins. He says he took his “people person” mentality from his grandfather and the “analytical” part from his father, but Hopkins knows “you have to be true to yourself.”
Hopkins’ leadership has impressed his father, CorTrust chairman Boyd D. Hopkins. “It’s been fun to work with a family member, as I had worked with my dad for probably better than 35 years, and that was always enjoyable,” Boyd says. “It’s a real good relationship as far as my coming into the business, and I think Jack has [had that], too.”
Hopkins has learned from his experiences in community work, past ICBA positions, congressional testimonies and state associations. “[Jack] is active—and always has been—in several community things in the various places that he has lived,” says Boyd D. Hopkins, Hopkins’ father and CorTrust chairman.
Starting in the mid ’90s, Hopkins served on the board of the Independent Community Bankers of South Dakota (ICBSD). He was elected as president in 1999, which is how he got involved with ICBA.
Hopkins joined ICBA’s Rural America and Agriculture committee, which gave him a chance to tackle issues close to his heart, given his roots in an agricultural community. Serving on this committee helped him understand what was going on at a national level. “I went to a Capital Summit, and I think my eyes were opened a little bit as to how things really worked out in Washington, D.C.,” he says. “I’d say [I’ve] been pretty active [with advocacy] since then.”
Indeed, he has. While on the board of the ICBSD, Hopkins helped established a political action committee and made close connections with South Dakota’s members of Congress. Hopkins has since brought his political action to the federal level, having testified in front of the House Financial Services Committee in 2010 and the Senate Banking Committee in 2011 and 2017.
Hopkins also served on the FDIC Advisory Committee on Community Banking from 2009 through 2012 and the CFPB Community Bank Advisory Board in 2015 and 2016. Hopkins has met with the heads of all the regulatory agencies many times.
In an era of smaller banks being disproportionately burdened with regulations, Hopkins’ advocacy—alongside other community bankers’—is essential. “It does threaten the livelihood of the community banking model if they continue to bury us with regulations,” he says. “We aren’t like the big banks that are making decisions out on the coast and saying, ‘This is what you’re going to do in Sioux Falls, S.D.,’ and their people on the ground are groaning. We have to live with it here.”
Hopkins’ number-one goal for his term is to makes waves in Washington and make it known how rules like the CFPB’s Section 1071 and Section 1033 rules affect smaller banks. He also advocates for modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act and all the unnecessary reporting that community banks are required to keep. Many thresholds in regulation have not been changed since the 1970s, and $10,000 then is not the same as $10,000 today. But he can’t do it alone.
“I’m hoping that we can encourage more grassroots advocacy, because it’s going to take a lot of advocacy this year to get some of these things done,” he says. “If they don’t hear from us, they don’t think it’s a problem.”
For those looking to get involved in advocacy, Hopkins recommends getting started at a state level: Join your state association; keep an eye on ICBA’s NewsWatch Today and the Be Heard Action Center (icba.quorum.us); send letters or emails to state senators and/or representatives; and attend ICBA’s Capital Summit (icba.org/capital-summit) in May.
“We have to be loud,” he states. “We have to give [Congress] examples of how it’s harming our customers, because at the end of the day, that’s what they care about.”
Welcoming the fourth generation
Boyd Hopkins Sr. purchased controlling rights of CorTrust Bank in 1961. Since then, both his son, Boyd D. Hopkins, and grandson, Jack E. Hopkins, have taken their turns as bank president and CEO. The trio represent three generations of the family-owned bank, and in 2018, the fourth generation was brought into the fold.
Just like her father, McKinzie Hopkins started her career in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. After she graduated from the University of St. Thomas with law and accounting degrees, she started at professional services organization Deloitte in Minneapolis.
As his father and grandfather did before him, Jack Hopkins required that his three children—McKinzie, Spencer and Jerrod—worked at outside organizations for at least four years before considering returning to CorTrust. Jerrod currently works for The Hartford Financial Services Group in Denver, while Spencer works as an attorney at a New York City law firm.
McKinzie, who’s the oldest, had been working with Deloitte Tax for about six years when Hopkins asked her if she was interested in working at the family bank. He made the official ask at a Minnesota Twins baseball game. “No pun intended, but it felt like it came out of left field,” says McKinzie. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
Hopkins had solid reasoning behind the request, however. “We were in the middle of taking on one [bank] purchase up in the Twin Cities market, and we were looking at another one,” he says. “I knew we needed some more help.”
For McKinzie, it took significant thought and consideration. “I also remember saying to my dad, ‘I know tax. I know nothing about banking. Are you sure?’ and he responded, ‘You know more than you think you do,’” McKinzie recalls. “Turns out, he was right!”
Now executive vice president of credit administration, McKinzie also likes to run sideline projects. For example, she is involved in choosing new products and services suitable for a younger generation. “She grasped a lot of it, a lot better than the rest of us [at the bank],” says Hopkins. “And she’s smarter than all of us.”
“I am so happy to be working in community banking,” says McKinzie. “It’s even better that I get to work alongside my dad. It is a natural fit for me, and I think he knew it would be.”
