North Alabama has more than 100 banks and credit unions, so why start another?
Founders of Nova Bank in Huntsville had a specific market in mind when they began the complex investment and approval process in 2020. Nova is one of two newly chartered Alabama banks to receive FDIC certification in the past two years. The other is Solutions Plus in Albertville.
Nova won’t become a megabank, its executives say. With one tiny, rented branch location downtown and a casual vibe, they’d rather be distinctive and neighborly.
“And as we get bigger, the plan is never to be Regions,” says Nova CEO Shad Williams. “The plan is never to grow and be a big giant. The plan is always to be a local community bank.”
Nova President Matt Davis agrees.
“This bank is built to be laid back, and boutique, and friendly, and non-stuffy,” he says. “We’re the ‘friends of friends of friends’ bank. We want people to come in here and have a great experience and know who we are.”
Customers actually have Davis’ personal cell phone number to contact him with a need or question.
Their overall target market is small businesses and professionals, says Williams. They want the accountants, doctors, engineers, consulting firms and those who work for or do business with Huntsville’s big companies — not necessarily the companies themselves. Nova lures some individuals with high CD rates.
But everyone knows that little banks are gobbled up by big ones all the time. That’s not in their plan, they say.
“Nova Bank will grow,” says Davis. “We’re going to be a name brand here for 20 years. We just happen to be in year two and we’re having to earn the right to do business with people. But I truly believe, and the reason we’re going to be here a long time, is because our service is better, the feeling is better. Our people are friendlier. We’re not centralized. You’re not calling 800 numbers. These are your people.”
The process to start a bank in Alabama is not for the faint of heart. First, there’s the $25,000 filing fee required by the state Bureau of Banks. Then they investigate your backers. The state weighs whether the community even needs another bank and dictates the amount of start-up cash.
“In our case, it was $20 million,” Williams says. “Think how many people you’ve got to go ask for a hundred grand from.”
As the deadline to raise $20 million grew near, founders were a little nervous. In the last week a “tsunami of money” swelled the coffers to $29 million.
So-called de novo banks are those starting from scratch rather than acquisition. Alabama requires their initial cash fund to sit in escrow for a year. A strict three-year supervisory period follows. FDIC approval is a separate process.
Davis calls the thorough background checks for directors and early investors “FBI level.”
About 25 early investors put up $4 million in 2020 and 2021 as seed money. That includes Williams and Davis. When the state wanted them to raise $16 million more, they sold stock for $10. The investors and 538 stockholders are mostly Alabama-based.
“There’s a few outside of Alabama, but the overwhelming majority is local — Madison County,” Williams says. “There were a good many investors that followed Dwight Rice, our chairman, and myself up here because we made a ton of money on the old bank” they started in Calhoun County.
Nova obtained its conditional charter in March 2023. The FDIC charter came in January 2024. They could start offering loans, which is how banks make money.
One of the hardest parts in creating a new bank, Davis explains, is finding the executive management team — including an experienced chairman and CEO.
Madison County native Davis had worked in banking for 23 years. Williams started in banking in 1973 and was a founder of Cheaha Bank in Oxford in 2020. In 2015, Business Alabama named Cheaha one of the top-performing Alabama community banks. Baton Rouge-based Investar Bank acquired Cheaha for $41.1 million in 2021.
Nova’s 16-member board is made up of local business people and early investors. Oxford attorney Dwight Rice is chairman.
Nova now has $86 million in assets and roughly 1,500 deposit customers.
Davis, who typically comes to the office in a sports shirt and shoes with no socks, likes to explain the idea behind the bank’s laid-back, no-tie vibe. The TV in the lobby, for example, might be showing a basketball game or music videos.
“For me, it’s about being authentic,” he says. “In the first 15, 20 years of my career, it was suits and shiny shoes and, not that it’s a bad thing, but COVID changed everything for us. So, in 2020 we got pushed home and we all worked a year in shorts and T-shirts on Teams meetings and we crushed it.”
“It’s a communication thing,” adds Williams. “We need to dress like our customers. If I’m dressed differently, more formal with a tie and a suit, that is an impediment to communication. You need to look just like the customer. I mean, that’s the way you help create that relationship.”
Still, with a glance at Davis’ no-socks look, Williams laughs and says, “I’ve given up.”
That “laid-back, warm, friendly” atmosphere was intentional from the beginning, Davis says.
“Let’s build an authentic bank that doesn’t feel stuffy, that people don’t feel like they’ve got to go put on a shirt and tie to go talk to their banker, where they’re talking more to their friend than their banker,” says Davis.
They’re not going after $5 million business loans anyway, they say.
“We’re trying to bank the everyday person, the person that needs the home equity line, that needs the car loan, the small business that needs $100,000 in working capital, your local dentist, your local doctor,” says Davis.
Williams lives in Oxford but drives to Nova in Huntsville daily. He is the elder statesman of the operation and says everyone else is in their 40s or younger.
“I tell them that I hope that this will be their last employer,” he says. “We want them to come and have a 30-year career with us.”
While Nova’s 2,500-square-foot banking location on Madison Street offers a full range of services, another office a few blocks away houses digital banking specialists, the credit team and others.
The plan is for everyone to be in a 10,000-square-foot or so downtown location soon.
“When we come out of de novo status, we’ll get us a permanent home,” says Williams.
“A year from now we’re going to have something nice and bold,” says Davis. “We’re going to look like a bank.”
For now, they’re being prudent with investors’ funds.
It wasn’t a good use of money to “go day one being the Taj Mahal,” says Williams.
Unlike many start-up banks, they aren’t hoping for a merger.
“There is no 10-year plan for us to sell,” says Davis. “There is no 15- or 20-year plan for us to sell. We’ve built something in the community that’s going to be here for us and our kids.”
Deborah Storey and Dennis Keim are Huntsville-based freelance contributors to Business Alabama.
This article appears in the May 2026 issue of Business Alabama.
