Marshall County Board of Finance opens banking proposals from 5 financial institutions

The Marshall County Board of Finance met Monday morning to open sealed proposals from financial institutions vying to provide banking services for the county, part of a competitive process conducted every two years.

The Board of Finance, which includes the County Commissioners, County Treasurer, and County Auditor, accepted the Requests for Proposal (RFP) with the goal of identifying institutions that will offer the highest quality service at the lowest cost and the highest rate of return on collected funds in county accounts.

County Treasurer Wendy Tapia opened the sealed proposals during Monday's meeting. Proposals were submitted by Interra Credit Union, Everwise Credit Union, Lake City Bank, 1st Merchants Bank in Bourbon, and 1st Farmers Bank and Trust in Culver.

Tapia told interested financial institutions that the county's General Account serves to deposit all incoming checks and electronic deposits. She noted that ledger balances for 2026 range from $36 million to $77 million, with April, May, October, and November traditionally seeing the most activity and larger balances.

Proposals are required to include per-item costs for a range of services, including checks and drafts paid, account maintenance, sweep feeds, check sorting, transfer of funds between accounts, debit blocks, deposits, electronic deposits, coin and currency processing, returned items, stop payments, encoded deposit tickets, endorsement stamps, and any other charges that may occur. Proposals must also provide the interest rate to be paid on collected funds and state how the interest is calculated.

While the Board of Finance opened the proposals Monday, they did not read any of the details. The County Treasurer will review the proposals and report back to the Board of Finance in a few weeks.