Lenders & Chief Credit Officers Conference

Join us as we hear from Kevin Gould and Melanie Cuevas, both from the California Bankers Association, as they provide their Legislative Update.

On the heels of COVID-19 and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and as we enter a period of economic uncertainty, the demand for capital from small businesses is as strong as ever.

However, as a unique hybrid between consumer and commercial lending, lending to small businesses has typically been a challenge for community banks to execute efficiently and profitably. As a result, small businesses remain underserved, while we continue to see alternative lenders and other digital upstarts bring new and innovative offerings to market.

Small business lending is a natural fit for community lenders. By streamlining the loan application experience and underwriting process, providing loans to small businesses can be both a relationship play and a thriving business.

Join Gord as he explores the emerging opportunity to better serve your small business customers and grow your small business lending program.

The need for financial institutions to embrace technology and innovation has become increasingly apparent over the past two years. In order for financial institutions to achieve their strategic goals, the need to reexamine existing information technology infrastructures, third party relationships, and access to data is critical. With mounting pressure in the form of increased competition from large banks, fintech companies, and community institutions with advanced online capabilities, the time to explore digital transformation is now.

Inflation, Fed rate hikes and global turmoil have created a level of uncertainty on par with the early 1980’s. Created in the midst of market turbulence 40 years ago, interest rate swaps are increasingly being utilized by community banks to protect the balance sheet from unwanted surprises.

One thing the Coronavirus Pandemic taught us was the importance of technology in our everyday lives. Financial Institutions with the most technology have outperformed peers in both loan and deposit growth during the Pandemic. However, having technology and effectively implementing it can be quite different responses. In this session we will discuss best practices in implementing technology and automation solutions to the lending side of the shop. We will also tackle change management issues that can derail successful implementation of new technologies at your financial institution.

The end to the publication of USD LIBOR is less than a year away. The Federal Government passed the Adjustable Interest Rate (LIBOR) Act, and in July 2022 the Federal Reserve proposed effectuating regulations, intended to address the discontinuation of USD LIBOR by setting up SOFR-based fallback benchmarks for certain agreements utilizing LIBOR. Banks should be aware of the different SOFR-based benchmarks proposed by the Federal Reserve, the types of contracts and in what circumstances each fallback benchmark will be applicable, how the fallback benchmarks differ from the LIBOR benchmarks they are replacing and what options banks may have to chart their own path in the transition.

Financial institutions have long had a fascination with fintech. While there are concerns about competition, more banks are finding ways to work with startups to segment their lending efforts and create faster/less onerous application processes. The pandemic punctuated the need for such collaboration. There are three main ways to do that: collaboration, investments/joint ventures, and outright acquisitions.