First National Bank of Georgia has announced it will be closing three branch offices over the next several weeks, though none of the closings will be in Carroll County, and its chief executive says the move in no way should affect the security of customers’ deposits.

The Carrollton-based company recently announced it will be consolidating branches in Douglasville, Bremen and Tallapoosa, with newer branches in those three cities to continue to operate as before. Some full-time employees at the branches being eliminated will be transferred to other locations within the same city or to other banks in the region, which includes Carroll, Haralson and Douglas counties. Altogether, there will be between 15 and 20 layoffs, with the majority of those to be part-time, temporary or seasonal employees, according to CEO Rocky Lipham.

The closings will take place over the next three weeks or so, with the process to be completed by approximately Sept. 4.

The Douglasville location that will be closing is on Highway 5. Lipham said the company acquired the building several years ago and has been leasing it ever since. The remaining Douglasville office is on Chapel Hill Road.

“In these times when everybody is tightening their belt, we decided that consolidating that office into the Chapel Hill office was the right thing to do,” Lipham said. “It’s a part of an overall plan to reduce expenses at the bank, and to get through all this, as many banks are a reflection of the communities where they’re located, and we’ve seen all businesses at this time tightening up, we’re going to be doing the same.”

In Bremen, the company is closing the branch on the Pacific Avenue side of Highway 78, with the remaining branch located at the crossroads of Highway 27 and Highway 78 near Wal-Mart. Once again, the company is eliminating the older branch in favor of the new location, which was completed three years ago.

The branch closing in Tallapoosa is on Bowdon Street, with the remaining branch on Georgia Highway.

Beyond these closings, Lipham said, the bank will not be closing any other locations in the foreseeable future.

This comes less than a year after the company laid off roughly 30 employees and closed its only Coweta County branch.

This string of recent closings, Lipham said, is the by-product of a greater problem not just at First National but for all banks across the country, regardless of their size.

Just last week, federal regulators shut down First Colonial Bank, a Montgomery, Ala.-based institution with more than $25 billion assets across Alabama, Georgia and Florida, Nevada and Texas. It was the sixth-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

“It speaks to the overall economic problem that we have in the national economy and specifically in the state of Georgia,” Lipham said. “Banks in the nation and particularly in Georgia and in west Georgia are suffering because of real estate devaluation. It is a primary driver of the problem, and what you have is a cycle ... There’s not a bank in west Georgia that really has made money in the last 12 or 18 months.”

In response to less-than-favorable market conditions, the company is cutting costs where it can, and the branch closings are part of a broader cost-cutting plan. He said that while eliminating the costs of salaries and benefits for employees of the branches that are closing is a significant step towards returning to profitability, by closing the branch itself the company is also cutting down on overhead and utility expenses. Over the past year, First National has also made cuts to its advertising budget and to its charitable-contributions budget.

As far as how these changes will affect customers, Lipham said, the difference should be negligible, as all bank assets are still insured and safe. He stressed that this is not the first step in a complete liquidation of the company, and that the bank itself is stable.

“All of our depositors should be very comfortable,” he said. “We are not in any way on an imminent closing plan ... For those who do have questions, we encourage customers to talk with their banker. There are a lot of things in the market place and rumors that can stir things further than they need be and distort the reality behind it.”