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In 2020, Scott Gaudin put all his eggs in one basket. At the height of the COVID pandemic, he walked away from a steady paycheck at a publicly traded bank, cashed out the entirety of his savings and retirement accounts, and set about the task of raising $30 million to purchase a small community bank.
Just nine months later, and after more than 200 meetings—mostly by Zoom, since meetings in person were discouraged—he had raised all the necessary capital and been approved by regulators to acquire Commerce Community Bank in the north Louisiana town of Oak Grove.
It was a risk, to be sure, but not one that he took lightly. Gaudin had done his homework and knew that area business owners were starving for personalized, concierge-level service. Banks had offered it in the past, but they’d either been sold or grown too big to focus on small- to medium-sized businesses and their owners.
Renaming the bank as Currency Bank, he branded the institution as “The Bank for Business Owners” and centralized its operations in Baton Rouge (while retaining the Oak Grove branch). From the outset, Currency Bank has deliberately searched for shareholders who would also use the bank as their own, thereby proactively protecting their own investment.
“We now have 144 shareholders that, thankfully, bought into that vision,” Gaudin says. It’s an impressive list that includes Brandon Landry, founder of Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux; Flynn Foster, president and CEO of Guaranty Corporation; Dr. Rubin Patel, founder and CEO of Patient Plus Urgent Care; and Mitch Rotolo, founder of Rotolo’s Pizzeria.
What You Don’t Know
The young Gaudin was keenly aware of the adage “you don’t know what you don’t know,” so in 2020-21 he turned to several experienced mentors to help him navigate through the intricacies of operating a bank. Gaudin’s first call was to longtime business associate Robert Daigrepont—the CEO of CPA firm Daigrepont Gremillion Advisors and current board chair at Currency—who wisely advised him to align the bank with the much larger Baton Rouge market, rather than Oak Grove.
Gaudin already had a strong work ethic from which to build. He’d watched his father, Dr. David Gaudin, overcome tremendous physical odds every day of his life. Born without legs, his father taught himself how to play golf from a kitchen stool at City Park, became a state championship wrestler at Lee High, and ultimately became LSU’s first physically handicapped medical school graduate.
He was also heavily influenced by former LSU head football coach Nick Saban and his staff while working as a student athletic equipment manager in the early 2000s. “It was such an important formative period for 19- and 20-year-olds,” he says. “You think you know how to work hard, but you really don’t.”
Not surprisingly, Gaudin finds it difficult to back down from a challenge, a trait that came in handy in 2020. “Buying a bank is hard,” he says. “I had to lean into several different skill sets—convince people to invest in the bank, convince regulators that I could be a good bank executive, and also manage a staff.”
He juggled all of it while deliberately pursuing another passion: community service. Gaudin currently chairs the boards at both Thrive Academy and the Louisiana Arts & Science Museum and previously chaired the board for BREC and served as a board member for the Baton Rouge Symphony. He is also an active member of the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge.
He deliberately approaches these and other volunteer opportunities in full-throttle fashion. “I believe that if you want to attract world-class talent to Baton Rouge you have to have more than seven home football games a year,” Gaudin says. “You have to offer a vibrant arts and culture scene that will attract high-quality people.”
Paul Sampson met Gaudin several years ago when they worked together at JPMorgan Chase. Sampson is now superintendent of Thrive Academy, a public, tuition-free residential charter school for at-risk students in grades 7-12, where Gaudin serves as board chair. “Scott is an amazing partner,” Sampson says. “He brings a level of expertise, calm and professionalism to the role of chairman.
He advocates for us in those rooms that we’re not in,” Sampson adds. “Bottom line: Scott Gaudin is a genuinely good soul. I have known and worked with him for more than 20 years, and he’s one of the good people.”
Now five years old, Currency Bank has accumulated some $250 million in assets and operates four branches: three in Louisiana and one in Arkansas. But at the end of the day, Gaudin isn’t interested in growth for growth’s sake. He wants to make decisions that are best for Baton Rouge, which he calls “the biggest small town in the country.”
Gaudin, his wife, Kay, and their 12-year-son live only a mile and half from where his father grew up, and just a stone’s throw from the LSU campus. “I sincerely want to help Baton Rouge grow as a community,” he says. “The more things that my bank can comfortably offer and manage, the more it will help Baton Rouge … both its businesses and people.”
Read about the other 2026 Business Awards & Hall of Fame honorees.
