The first time Kathy Torske applied for the president’s role at American Trust Center, Dickinson, N.D., she was 29 and had been with the company for only a few years. Although the board was impressed with her resume and performance with the company, they decided she needed a few more years to ripen. Torske had no hard feelings. [Continue]
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. “Why won’t they just finish the project?” I am sure “they,” those awful nameless faceless creatures, are lurking at your institution as well. How do we flush them out? How did they infiltrate our institution in the first place? [Continue]
The person best suited to lead a systemically important financial institution would likely fit a complex profile. But what of the community bank and its leadership needs? Should community bank boards be any less prescriptive when creating a profile for a next-generation leader? [Continue]
Invest Sou Sou is a company leveraging tech to create and maintain “lending circles.” This is something of a new twist on an old concept of community-based lending. BankBeat spoke with the company’s co-founder and CEO, Fonta Gilliam, about her career and what lending circles can accomplish. [Continue]
Jon-Myckle Price got into banking because of a pool. A lifelong swimmer, Price was writing a paper for a college economics class and chose to focus on his local public pool in Logansport, Ind., because it was on the brink of closing. The paper led to a job managing the pool after college, but it was while dropping off a deposit at a local bank that Price decided to apply for a branch manager opening. [Continue]
Wisconsin’s WaterStone Bank is adding a pair of branches in the Milwaukee market later this year in Oak Creek and West Allis. [Continue]
There’s a proverb that goes: A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. I connect this idea to community banking, where each day, bankers make investments in the form of loans, which is really about planting the seeds (and seedlings) for economic growth. [Continue]
Since she began at Peoples Bank Midwest nearly 11 years ago, Megan Willcoxen has seized every opportunity to learn and serve the bank. Today, married and pregnant with her second child, she is a vice president of the $380 million Wisconsin-based bank, directing treasury management services at its Vadnais Heights, Minn., office and providing leadership for its three branches. [Continue]
In May, the House Financial Services Committee approved the COUNTER Act to modernize and reform the Bank Secrecy Act. The bipartisan bill (H.R. 2514) sets out to curb money laundering and illicit financial activities. It awaits a vote on the House floor. [Continue]
With a high of 83 degrees, May 16 was a great day for Craig Madsen to get out of the office and into the field. Literally. Madsen is community president and senior lending officer at Bank Plus in Estherville, Iowa, and has been named a 2019 Rising Star in Banking by BankBeat magazine. [Continue]