Jim Watkins

Jim Watkins is the current Chief Deposit Officer at Limestone Bank. Prior to joining Limestone Bank, Jim served as the Vice President/CRA & Compliance Officer at 1st Independence Bank where they were hired to create CRA and Compliance programs from the ground up. At 1st Independence Bank, Jim developed and standardized policies and procedures, created documentation, and trained staff. Jim also redeveloped and centralized loan processing for compliance and process efficiencies. As a result of Jim’s efforts, auditing costs were reduced by $40k and the Bank’s FDIC CRA examination rating improved to “Satisfactory” in 15 months.

Before 1st Independence Bank, Jim was the CRA Business Development Officer at Republic Bank. In this role, they were responsible for identifying opportunities for community reinvestment activities, developing relationships with key community partners, and structuring transactions that would result in community benefits while also being profitable for the bank.

Jim has over 20 years of experience in the banking industry and is an expert in leadership, customer experience, business strategy, project management, process improvement, compliance, regulations, audits, risk management, and cost reduction.

Jim Watkins has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Louisville, a Master of Science (MS) in Environmental Biology from the University of Louisville, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Biology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Their manager is John T. Taylor , President & CEO. Some of their coworkers include Stephanie Renner - SVP, General Counsel, Limestone Bank, John R. Davis - EVP, Chief Credit Officer, , and Joseph C. Seiler - EVP, Head of Commercial Banking, Limestone Bank.