9:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Breakfast & Registration
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Workshop 1: Leading Forward: Building a Leadership Pipeline For The Future
This workshop equips banking c-suite leaders with the frameworks, tools and practical strategies needed to build a sustainable leadership pipeline and a culture where developing leaders is everyone’s responsibility. This workshop bridges the often-separated disciplines of succession planning and leadership development into a single, cohesive approach – helping institutions build their future C-suite from within while maintaining strategic momentum through leadership transitions. Participants leave with structured approaches to assessing executive readiness, personalized development planning tools and concrete action commitments they can implement immediately at their institutions.
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Workshop 2: Strengthening Your Bank’s Balance Sheet
This workshop equips banking leaders with practical frameworks to defend core funding, optimize net interest margin, manage CRE risk and diversify into high-margin lending opportunities. Participants leave with actionable strategies tailored to the realities of community and regional banking.
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Workshop 3: Strategic Plan Design
This workshop guides banking executives through a comprehensive strategic planning process. From external environmental scan to internal assessment to strategic choice formulation to disciplined execution. Participants leave with frameworks they can immediately apply to refresh their institution’s strategic plan and the governance mechanisms to keep strategy alive throughout the year.
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Workshop 4: Growth – M&A and Organic Expansion
This workshop helps banking leaders evaluate the full spectrum of growth options available to their institution, from M&A transactions to organic market expansion to sharpening their competitive differentiation. Participants leave with a clearer understanding of which growth path aligns with their bank’s strategic vision, stakeholder expectations and operational capacity.
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Workshop 5: Building a Practical AI & Technology Roadmap for Community Banks
This workshop helps banking leaders cut through the AI hype and build a practical, sequenced technology roadmap tailored to their institution’s size, budget, and maturity. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of where to start, how to govern the journey, and how to build the data foundation that makes AI investment worthwhile.
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Welcoming Peer & Guest Reception
To kick off the Corporate Governance Workshop and C-Suite Summit, we invite all participants – and their guests – to join us for refreshments and light hors d’oeuvres.
7:00 AM – 8:00 AM
Breakfast & Registration
8:00 AM – 8:05 AM
Day One Welcome
Michelle King, CEO, Bank Director
Laura Schield, President & COO, Bank Director
Bank Director welcomes all attendees to the third annual Bank C-Suite Summit in Chicago.
8:05 AM – 8:35 AM
The State of Our Industry
In this session, hear the current state of the banking industry and the underlying factors driving change and creating opportunities for community banks today.
8:35 AM – 9:05 AM
Building An Institution for Sustainable Growth
The decisions bank executives make today, about technology investments, talent development, strategic partnerships and evolving business models, will shape their institution’s competitive position for the next decade. This panel discussion explores how leaders can navigate the forces transforming the industry, from technology adoption and digital innovation to workforce evolution and shifting customer expectations.
9:15 AM – 9:50 AM
Breakout Sessions (select one)
Breakout 1: Structure, Focus & Time Management for Bank Executives
The demands on bank executives have never been greater: more decisions, more complexity, more competing priorities and never enough hours in the day. Few leaders are ever taught how to manage themselves with the same rigor they bring to managing their institutions. This session delivers practical frameworks for prioritization, personal operating systems and executive effectiveness.
Breakout 2: Beyond the C-Suite: Building Leadership at Every Level
In a rapidly evolving financial landscape shaped by AI, regulatory shifts, and growing succession gaps, financial institutions can no longer rely solely on traditional C-suite pipelines—they must cultivate leaders at every level. This session explores how organizations can identify emerging talent early, develop them through intentional growth pathways, and build a culture that empowers distributed leadership.
Breakout 3: AI in Banking: Moving From Pilot to Production
The gap between experimenting with AI and actually deploying it at scale is where strategy, compliance and ROI collide. This session addresses the apprehension of examining what community banks are putting to work today, what the numbers actually show and how to build the governance guardrails that keep regulators and your board comfortable.
Breakout 4: Lending, Deposits & Digital Tools for Small Business Banking
Small businesses are your most valuable and most at-risk relationships. Yet most community banks still manage SMB loans, deposits, treasury and digital touchpoints in silos. This session breaks down what the data says about attrition risk, what it takes to become the go-to financial partner across the entire small-business relationship, and which tools drive stickiness.
9:50 AM – 10:05 AM
Refreshment Break
10:05 AM – 10:35 AM
Navigating a New Regulatory Era
The regulatory environment is shifting faster than at any point in recent memory. Bank executives are managing a landscape defined by simultaneous deregulation in some areas and intensifying new obligations in others. This session cuts through the complexity and uncovers what it means for day-to-day bank operations, risk management and long-term performance.
10:35 AM – 11:05 AM
Reaching the Next Threshold
Breaking through to the next asset threshold requires more than capital; it demands the right decisions at the right moments, the resilience to recover from the ones that didn’t work and the vision to keep building when the path forward isn’t clear. In this candid panel discussion, industry experts who have guided banks across critical asset-size thresholds – from early-stage community banks to $1 billion and beyond – share the unfiltered realities of what it takes to break through.
11:15 AM – 12:20 PM
Peer Exchanges: Session 1
A highlight of the Bank Director events, during the Summit, banker participants are divided by similar titles, roles and responsibilities to candidly discuss and debate various topics and issues facing banks today. All peer exchanges are led by an industry advisor and are conducted in a closed-door, off-the-record setting.
Technology-Focused Peer Exchange
- Artificial Intelligence
- Talent: Building Your Team
- Making the Right Investment
- Integration Challenges
- Risk Considerations
- Due Diligence Best Practices
Human Resources & Talent-Focused Peer Exchange
- Talent
- Compensation
- Succession Planning
- Developing the Next Talent Pool
- Incentive Compensation – does it align with your strategic plan?
- Creating Your Growth Plan: What’s Next?
Marketing-Focused Peer Exchange
- Data
- Products/Services
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Niche Banking
- Branding
- Competition
Finance & Risk Focused Peer Exchange
- Balance Sheet Management
- Growth Initiatives & Strategy
- Growing Organically
- Competitive Threats
- Making the Right Investments
- Risk Management
- Technology Budget: Impact on the Bank
- IT Risks
- Regulation
- Credit Risk
12:20 PM – 1:20 PM
Networking Lunch
1:20 PM – 1:50 PM
Succession Planning Strategies for Today’s Leadership Challenges
Retirements are accelerating, the competition for executive talent is intensifying, and the skills required to lead a modern bank are evolving faster than most succession plans account for. This session explores practical, proven strategies for identifying, developing and retaining the next generation of banking leaders.
1:50 PM – 2:20 PM
The Moments That Shaped Our Institutions
Every bank has a handful of decisions that fundamentally changed its trajectory: a bold acquisition, a strategic pivot or a choice made in the middle of a crisis. In this session, bank CEOs pull back the curtain on the moments that defined their institutions, the thinking behind those calls and what they would, or wouldn’t, do differently.
2:30 PM – 3:05 PM
Breakout Sessions (select one)
Breakout 1: How Community Banks Compete and Win Against Larger Institutions
Community banks can’t out-product, out-price, or out-tech the mega-banks but consistently win on relationship, speed and local knowledge when those strengths are properly leveraged. This session explores ways to utilize market share against larger competitors and address areas where community banks are genuinely losing and why.
Breakout 2: Communicating Your Strategic Plan
Most banks have a strategic plan. Far fewer have a strategy their people can actually recite, act on or connect to their daily work. The gap between a well-crafted plan and an organization that truly executes on it is almost always a communication problem not a strategy problem. This session gives executives practical frameworks for translating c-suite vision into department-level goals, individual scorecards and the daily behaviors that move the needle.
Breakout 3: The Payments Revolution
The payments landscape is shifting faster than most community banks can react: FedNow real-time payments, digital wallets, embedded finance, stablecoins and Buy Now Pay Later are all reshaping how customers move money. This session gives executives a clear-eyed view of which payment trends will matter for their institution and which to ignore.
Breakout 4: What 2027 Means for Regulation & Community Banks
The regulatory landscape is shifting faster than most community banks can track and the decisions being made in Washington today will reshape how you operate, compete and grow tomorrow. From evolving capital requirements and CFPB changes to CRA modernization and the emerging stablecoin and crypto regulatory framework, the stakes have rarely been higher. This session cuts through the uncertainty to give executives a clear-eyed view of what’s coming, what it means for your institution, and how to position your bank ahead of the curve not behind it.
3:15 PM – 3:50 PM
Breakout Sessions (select one)
Breakout 1: Winning Distinction in a Hyper-Competitive Market
Core deposit growth is the #1 balance sheet challenge facing community banks right now: rising funding costs, brokered deposit risks and fintech competition are all squeezing net interest margin. This session discusses how to build core deposits through relationship deepening, digital onboarding improvements and small business strategies.
Breakout 2: Breaking Down Silos
Organizational dysfunction can be a deeply frustrating issue in institutions looking to grow: credit underwriting that slows lenders down, compliance that feels adversarial, support functions disconnected from revenue goals. The root cause is almost always misaligned incentives, unclear ownership, and poor cross-functional communication. This session names the problem directly and provides a diagnostic framework.
Breakout 3: AI in Banking: Moving From Pilot to Production
The gap between experimenting with AI and actually deploying it at scale is where strategy, compliance and ROI collide. This session addresses the apprehension to examining what community banks are putting to work today, what the numbers actually show and how to build the governance guardrails that keep regulators and your board comfortable.
Breakout 4: Balance Sheet Strategies for Private and Family-Owned Banks
Running a privately held or family-owned bank comes with a set of pressures that public institutions simply don’t face and that most off-the-shelf strategic advice wasn’t built to address. This session tackles the balance sheet challenges unique to privately held and family-owned institutions head-on from managing capital without public market pressure to navigating M&A on your own terms.
3:50 PM – 4:05 PM
Refreshment Break
4:05 PM – 5:05 PM
Peer Exchanges: Session 2
Building on the first round of peer exchanges, banker participants return to their same peer groups and attend the second round of peer exchange sessions facilitated by industry leaders.
5:05 PM – 6:05 PM
Networking Peer & Guest Reception
7:00 AM – 8:00 AM
Breakfast
8:00 AM – 8:05 AM
Day Two Welcome
Michelle King, CEO, Bank Director
Laura Schield, President & COO, Bank Director
8:05 AM – 8:35 AM
Mission Driven Growth Strategy
Community and regional banks are navigating an environment where big banks are deploying technology at scale and fintechs are targeting the most profitable corners of the retail and small business markets. This panel discussion shares what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to winning and maintaining customer relationships.
8:45 AM – 9:20 AM
Breakout Sessions (select one)
Breakout 1: The Budget Reckoning
Often times marketing budgets are often the first to be cut and the hardest to defend. This session provides a practical framework for allocating marketing spend across channels (digital, print, sponsorships, events) and critically how to measure and communicate marketing ROI to your board and CEO.
Breakout 2: Connecting HR Strategy to the Bank’s Operating Plan
A strategic plan without a workforce plan is incomplete. When people strategy is treated as an afterthought, growth goals stall, technology investments underperform and succession gaps surface. This session explores how to build an integrated workforce plan that functions as a genuine input to, not a byproduct of, your bank’s operating plan, ensuring the right people are in the right seats to execute your strategy.
Breakout 3: The Next Frontier of Banking Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is no longer just answering questions, it is taking action. Agentic AI systems can autonomously execute tasks, make decisions, and adapt in real time, fundamentally changing how banks operate and serve customers. In this session, discover where agentic AI is delivering measurable value in banking today, how to deploy it responsibly and what your institution must do now to stay ahead.
Breakout 4: Growing Your Loan Portfolio in a Shifting Rate Environment
In today’s rate environment, the margin for error in loan growth has never been smaller. Credit quality, CRE exposure and consumer lending mix are converging in ways that demand smarter portfolio strategy. This session examines how community banks are using data to identify opportunities, manage concentration risk and build lending strategies that hold up across rate cycles.
9:20 AM – 9:40 AM
Refreshment Break
9:40 AM – 10:40 AM
Peer Exchanges: Session 3
Banker participants return to their previous peer exchange groups for the third round of peer exchange sessions facilitated by industry leaders.
10:50 AM – 11:20 AM
Keynote: Leading With Grit and Purpose
The most enduring institutions aren’t built on favorable conditions; they’re built on clear vision, sound strategy and leaders who refuse to back down when the path gets hard. In this keynote, a proven banking CEO shares the leadership philosophy developed over a career defined by adversity, bold decision-making and the relentless pursuit of growth.
11:20 AM – 11:50 AM
What We Know Now That We Wish We Knew Then
The path to the CEO chair is rarely a straight line, and the lessons learned along the way are often the ones that matter most. In this candid discussion, seasoned bank CEOs reflect on the hard-won insights, unexpected challenges and pivotal moments that shaped how they lead today.
11:50 AM – 11:55 AM
Closing Remarks