Strategy
02/01/2019

Who Will Lead the Bank Industry Into the Future?


leadership-2-1-19.pngLeadership is a central aspect of banking. Not only do bank executives lead their institutions, but directors who sit on bank boards tend to be leading members of their communities.

Indeed, it’s no coincidence that the biggest and tallest buildings in many cities and towns across the country are named after banks.

That’s why leadership was one underlying theme of this year’s Bank Director’s Acquire or Be Acquired Conference held at the JW Marriott in Phoenix, Arizona.

It was the 25th anniversary of the conference, one of the marquee events in the banking industry each year.

The conference opened with a video tracing the major events in banking since 1994—a period of deregulation, consolidation and innovation.

In that time, the population of banks has been cut in half, Great Depression-era regulations have rolled back and the internet and iPhone have made it possible for three-quarters of deposit transactions at some banks to be completed from the comforts of bank customers’ own homes.

It was only fitting then to bookend the conference with some of the greatest leaders in the banking industry throughout this tumultuous time.

The first day concluded with the annual L. William Seidman CEO Panel, featuring Michael “Mick” Blodnick, the chief executive officer of Glacier Bancorp from 1998-2016, and Joe Turner, the CEO of Great Southern Bancorp since 2000.

The banks run by Blodnick and Turner have created more value than nearly all other publicly traded banks in the United States. Glacier ranks first in all-time total shareholder return—dividends plus share price appreciation—while Great Southern ranks fifth on the list.

As Blodnick and Turner explained on stage, there is no one right way to grow. Blodnick did so at Glacier through a series of 30 mergers and acquisitions, building one of the leading branch networks throughout the Rocky Mountain region.

Turner took a different approach at Great Southern. He and his father, who had run the bank from 1974 to 2000, focused instead on organic growth. They built a leading footprint in the Southwest corner of Missouri, and then, in the financial crisis, completed five FDIC-assisted transactions to spread their footprint into cities up the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

One consequence of this approach was it enabled Great Southern to consistently decrease its outstanding share count by upwards of 40 percent since originally going public, as it never had to issue shares to buy other banks.

Asked what one thing he wanted to share with the audience, Turner talked about the importance of ignoring shortsighted stock analysts. Despite Great Southern’s extraordinary returns through the years, it has rarely if ever been “buy” rated by the analyst community.

Why not? When the economy is great and other banks are growing at a rapid clip, Great Southern tempers its growth to avoid making imprudent loans. Then when times are tough, and a pall is cast over all stocks, Great Southern surges ahead.
Blodnick’s advice focused on M&A. For sellers, the goal should never be to get the last nickel, he explained. Rather, the goal should be to establish a partnership that will maximize value over time.

The conference also had a parallel track of sessions, FinXTech, focused on technology.

These sessions were often standing-room only. It was an obvious indication about what the future leaders of banking are focused on now.

Don MacDonald, the chief marketing officer of MX Technologies, took a particularly broad approach to the subject. Although his session ostensibly focused on harnessing data to increase growth and returns, he put the topic into historical perspective.

The question MacDonald was trying to answer was: How do we know if the banking industry has reached a genuine inflection point, after which the rules of the game, so to speak, have changed?

The answer to this question, MacDonald said, can be found in developing a framework for assessing change. That framework should include multiple forces in an industry, such as regulations, customer expectations and technology.

It’s only when multiple major forces experience change at or around the same time that a true strategic inflection point has been reached, explained MacDonald.

Has banking reached such a point?

MacDonald didn’t answer that question, but given the environment banks operate in right now with the growth of digital distribution channels and the ever-evolving regulatory regime, one would be excused for coming to that conclusion.

Given these two tracks—the general sessions focusing on banking and the FinXTech sessions focusing on technology—it was fitting that the final day of the conference was opened by John B. McCoy, the former CEO of Bank One, from 1984-99.
McCoy hails from the notoriously innovative McCoy banking dynasty, preceded by his father and grandfather. Bank One was one of the earliest adopters of credit cards, drive-through windows and ATMs, among other things.

Furthermore, it was McCoy’s approach to acquisitions at Bank One, where he completed more than 100 deals, that helped to inform Blodnick’s approach at Glacier. Known as the “uncommon partnership,” the approach focused on buying banks, but allowing them to retain their autonomy.

The decentralized aspect of the uncommon partnership left decision-making at the local level—within the acquired banks. It allowed Bank One and Glacier to have their cake and eat it too—growing through M&A, but leaving the leadership of the individual institutions where it belongs: In their local communities. This resulted in lower customer attrition, the scourge of most deals.

One overarching lesson from Acquire or Be Acquired is that banking is about facilitating the growth of communities, and the best people to spearhead this are the ones with the most on the line—the leaders of those communities.

WRITTEN BY

John Maxfield

Freelancer

John Maxfield is a freelance writer for Bank Director magazine. He was previously the senior banking specialist at The Motley Fool. He regularly writes for Bank Director magazine and BankDirector.com. His work has been syndicated widely to national publications including USA Today, Time and Business Insider, and he’s been a regular guest on CNBC. John has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Lewis & Clark College and a juris doctorate from Southern Methodist University. He’s a licensed attorney in the State of Oregon.