ABA Banking Journal 5/08 - (Page 27) could have himself a crisp, clean copy of The Frost Philosophy. But, as he thumbs through his personal edition, he says, “My old book is tattered and torn, but I prefer it. As we bought banks, there are notes here on how we introduced our philosophy to them; notes on different points I wanted to make at the time.” The booklet itself, though only a handful of pages long, speaks volumes for Frost Bank employees. The contents are short and sweet: “The Frost Philosophy,” spelled out by Evans, the first head of the bank who did not come from the founding Frost family. The booklet begins, “At Frost, everything we do begins with this book…”, and it includes the company mission statement and a summary of the organization’s core values. (You can read The Frost Philosophy in our digital edition, accessible from www.ababj.com.) “People can have good philosophies and good culture, but the real trick is living it every day,” says Evans. “That’s what we try to do. We’re far from perfect, and we never will be perfect.” Evans says it’s quite common for him to quote or refer to passages from the blue book when speaking to fellow officers and employees about new services or pending deals, and, also, for others to quote to him. “You know what I love?” he continues. “I love it when somebody says, ‘Wait a minute, Dick. You’re not pulling the wagon.’ That’s healthy.” Walking the Frost walk Evans, a native of the small Texas town of Uvalde, 80 miles south of San Antonio, is plainly dedicated to Frost Bank. He’s spent his entire banking career there, starting in its training program in 1971, after a stint as a national bank examiner. His father had died when he was young, and a local banker became the young man’s mentor. When he finished college, unsure what to do with himself, the banker suggested giving banking a try, with federal examination work as an introductory course. “‘If you get lucky, maybe a bank will hire you’,” Evans recalls his mentor telling him. “‘And after you’ve worked at a bank for ten years, you’ll know if you’re going to be a banker’.” When he began, Frost Bank had $350 million in assets. Today, the company tops $13 billion. Its trust department has more than $25 billion in assets under management—it manages over six million acres of oil and gas interests, among other things. The bank began as an offshoot to a family business. Colonel Thomas Claiborne Frost, whose service in the Confederate Army legally barred him from resuming his law practice after the Civil War, saw Texas as a place to start fresh. He’d spent two years running a profitable freight line, and put money into his brother’s failing general store and auction business. What started as store credit accounts, and the equivalent of inventory finance among Texas sheepherders holding out for better prices for their wool, evolved into Frost Bank. (Excerpts from the bank’s history books appear in the magazine’s 100th Anniversary section at www.ababj.com.) Although the bank in time went public, until Evans became bank president in 1985, there was always a Frost at the helm. But Evans is all but considered a Frost by family patriarch Subscribe at www.ababj.com ABA BANKING JOURNAL/MAY 2008 27 PHOTOGRAPH BY JANA BIRCHUM http://www.ababj.com http://www.ababj.com http://www.ababj.com
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