Vendors at HmongTown Marketplace–the bustling indoor-outdoor market in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood–have been selling Southeast Asian food, clothing, and home goods for about two decades now. Starting today, the market is adding something else to its long list of offerings: financial services.

On Friday, St. Cloud-based Stearns Bank announced that it has opened a new loan and deposit production office inside the marketplace. It’s the first financial institution in the market.

The office is not a standard bank branch per se, but bankers there will provide many of the usual personal and business banking services for customers. The main draw of the new location is bankers who understand the local clientele’s needs and ambitions, according to Heather Plumski, Stearns Bank’s executive VP and chief financial and strategy officer.

The office will be staffed by bank employees who are part of the Hmong community, she said in an interview with TCB. “The heart of that location will be the people we’ll have there,” Plumski said. “Every community has unique needs.”

This isn’t Stearns Bank’s first foray into culturally-specific banking services: The company also operates a Salaam Banking division for Islamic customers. And in spring 2023, the bank announced plans to distribute $10 million in loans for African immigrants.

Toua Xiong, HmongTown Marketplace’s founder, believes the bank’s new location will benefit both customers and vendors. He noted that many of the marketplace’s vendors source their products overseas – from places like Thailand, Laos, and China – so they need regular access to wire transfers and other banking services. He’s hopeful that the new office is just the beginning of a long-lasting relationship between Stearns Bank and the local Hmong community.

Xiong’s own relationship with the bank was somewhat incidental: When he was searching for a borrower for his planned second HmongTown Marketplace in Maplewood, a California broker recommended Stearns Bank. He said he actually wasn’t familiar with the bank prior to that introduction.

“Knowing us for a very short time, they invested in us,” Xiong said of Stearns. Xiong expects the second marketplace, set inside an old Sears at Maplewood Mall, to open by the “later part of 2025.”

Today, Minnesota is home to an estimated 95,000 Hmong people, though Xiong thinks that number is likely much higher. He believes the Stearns Bank office in his market can help provide needed banking services for many of those people. “I will do whatever I can in my capacity to help make sure Stearns Bank can provide the consumer products that Hmong people are looking for,” he said.

The HmongTown Marketplace, of course, welcomes a diverse set of visitors beyond the Hmong community. By Xiong’s estimates, anywhere from 20,000 to 25,000 people stop in on a weekly basis.