After nearly 40 years, BTH Bank’s Troy Robinson has made the decision to retire.

Robinson has most recently been the BTH Bank vice chairman at their headquarters in Quitman. He is the son of Bill and June Robinson and has served at the Quitman facility for 39 years. Robinson is a 1975 graduate of Quitman High School followed by earning a bachelor of business administration degree from Texas A&M in 1979. At A&M he met his wife, Debbie, and they were married in 1982.

While at QHS, Robinson was in the band and an active member of Future Farmers of America (FFA). He grew up going to First United Methodist Church in Quitman. The Robinsons are members of St. Peters Catholic Church in Mineola.

Before getting into banking, Robinson spent two years in Houston working for Mitchell Energy. He came to work at First National Bank of Quitman in 1981 after his dad encouraged him to contact Granville Benton of the bank. Soon after the meeting with Benton, Robinson started work at the local bank. 

“I had always admired Mr. Benton and what they did. I enjoyed working with people and I saw that it would be something I would be interested in doing. I spent the first 12 or 13 years at First National in operations. Larry Mott and I installed the first in-house computer for the bank in 1986,” Robinson explained. “I then moved over to lending and became executive vice president and in 1998 became president and CEO.”

In a news release sent by BTH Bank it stated, “Troy joined the bank in 1981 when assets were in the $20 million range. He progressed in his responsibilities over his tenure and has mentored younger bankers in their careers. Troy championed the bank’s advancement in technology and digital security, led the equity offering in 2007 to acquire the bank from prior ownership, and was the enabling force of the adoption of a fresh, unique approach to banking in 2013.”

Robinson said the bank started as a private bank in 1890 and in 1905 it became the First State of Quitman. In 1914, it became First National Bank of Quitman.

“Then in 2005 we changed the name to Bank Texas because we wanted to grow the bank in areas outside of Quitman,” Robinson said. “When I became president in 1998 we were about an $85 million bank. In 2013 we were about a $225 million bank and we had expanded to Holly Lake, Winnsboro, Lindale and into Tyler and Longview.”

Since the move to BTH in 2013, the bank has grown from $225 million in assets to $1.95 billion and has expanded from six locations to 13.

“I am proud we are about the 40th largest bank in Texas today and we are certainly the largest bank headquartered in an 1,800 person town,” Robinson observed. 

“When I started working here, there were seven banks that were chartered in Wood County and today there are three. When I started to work there were 15,000 banks in the United States and today there are less than 6,000. There has been that much consolidation in the nation,” Robinson said. 

What kept Robinson going after many years in the job? “I can tell it was the customers and the employees. I was blessed with all the people who have worked at the bank and what I learned from them that made my career very satisfying,” Robinson affirmed.

When asked about advice he would give a young person thinking of going into to banking and finance, Robinson stated, “It is a good choice. It is much tougher today. You have to work very, very hard and you must continue learning from all the different ways you can learn. Be humble and listen to advice.”

Robinson is a past winner of the Masonic Community Builder Award, served on the Quitman City Council for 14 years and is active on the hospital advisory board. He also serves on the East Texas Mental Health Foundation.

For retirement, Robinson does plan to stay home. He plans to travel with his wife, and in the very near future there is a trip to New York to spend quality time with their new grandson. The Robinsons have two sons, Clayton, who resides in New York, and Alex who lives in the Dallas area.