Travillian Next

Welcome to the first episode of Travillian Next: Investment Banking Edition! Hosted by Dave Yancoskie, Managing Partner & Head of Investment Banking Search at Travillian, with guest John Butler, Managing Partner & Head of the Insurance Investment Banking Group at Piper Sandler.Secrets To Sustained Success Over Time • Security can no longer be a second hat on the IT manager's desk• AI agents are exploiting decades-old contro...

Your deposits aren't as loyal as they used to be. Nationwide's Mark Hackett and Wolf & Company's Jeff Marsico explain why money is on the move, even in a strong economy, and what community banks should do about it.The economy looks good: consumers are spending, the stock market is healthy, and the AI build-out is fueling growth. So why is it getting harder for banks to hold onto deposits? On this episode of Travillian Next, Bri...

At most community banks, cybersecurity sits with an IT manager who already owns hardware, software, vendor risk, and board reporting. AI agents are now exploiting the same access control and segmentation gaps the industry has known about for twenty years, and that job has outgrown one desk. Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Chris Bedel, Founder, President and CEO of Bedel Security, and Cyrene Wilke, ...

Many niche banking initiatives rely more heavily on tailored messaging and distribution than on fundamentally differentiated financial products. But building a real growth engine requires a clean slate, a willingness to innovate at the product level, and deep research into the customers a bank wants to serve.

Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Mary Kate Loftus, President, Impressia Connect, CNB Bank, ...

Everyone's talking about Banking-as-a-Service. Almost no one has actually built it — and even fewer have done it twice. Patrick Slain has.

In this episode, the Stearns Bank fintech lead sits down with host Amber Buker to get real about what building a BaaS program takes: why it's a six-year commitment, how to keep it aligned with the bank's risk appetite, what separates a great fintech partner from a deal you should walk away ...

Stablecoins are moving from the headlines into the banking system, and community banks are paying attention. In this episode of Travillian Next, Alex Treece, CEO and Co-Founder of Stablecore, and Branden Hansen, President at Bank of Utah, join Travillian's Keith Daly to discuss why now is the moment for community banks to act. They cover the GENIUS Act and clearer regulation, a stablecoin market that's grown from about $30 billion ...

Bank regulation has shifted fast over the last 18 months, and Ian Maloney, Chief Policy Officer at the American Fintech Council, joins Keith Daly on Travillian Next to break down what it means for bank compliance and risk teams. They get into why the prudential regulators are more coordinated, how reputation risk left the exam handbooks in favor of material financial risk, and the first CAMELS rating rewrite since 1996. Ian also la...

Steve Plunk was the OCC examiner at the center of the Penn Square Bank collapse, one of the most consequential bank failures in American history. He sits down with Travillian's Amber Buker to revisit the oil-fueled bank that fooled the biggest names in banking, the one line on the balance sheet that brought it down, and where that same blind spot is hiding in banks today.

A special conversation from the collaboration series between...

Brent Beardall, President and CEO of WaFd, Inc., joins Brian Love to tell the story of his rise from a bank file room to the CEO seat. Partway through, he gets surprised on camera by Simone Lagomarsino, the former CEO of Luther Burbank Savings, the bank WaFd acquired. The two cover leadership, the WaFd and Luther Burbank merger, surviving the 2023 banking crisis, and why banking is still a noble profession. A good listen for anyone...

Travillian's bank & fintech recap from May 2026: Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer, and Brian Love, Head of Banking & Fintech Search, recap the month's biggest banking and fintech conferences (Finovate, D.A. Davidson, S&P Global, and Alloy Labs in Nashville). The honest, occasionally goofy conversation covers young bank executive talent, succession planning, stablecoin and tokenized deposits, AI in the boardroom, bank...

Rhinebeck Bank President and CEO Matthew Smith joins Travillian Next for a candid conversation about leading a 160-year-old community bank into its next chapter. Six months into the role at the $1.3 billion publicly traded bank in Poughkeepsie, New York, Matt shares how he is thinking about balancing 1950s-style community service with 2026 technology, building a culture of diversity of thought, and setting the strategic direction f...

In this Part 2, on-location episode of Travillian Next, host Amber Buker (Chief Research Officer at Travillian) sits down with Heather Luck, EVP & Chief Financial Officer at Five Star Bank, for a candid, documentary-style conversation filmed inside the bank itself.

Heather opens up about the financial discipline behind one of the country's fastest-growing community banks. She walks through how Five Star manages its outsized CRE ...

In this special, on-location episode of Travillian Next, host Amber Buker (Chief Research Officer at Travillian) sits down with Michael Rizzo, EVP & Chief Banking Officer at Five Star Bank, for a candid, documentary-style conversation filmed inside the bank itself.

Michael only half-jokingly calls Five Star "a sales organization masquerading as a bank," and that mindset runs through everything they unpack. He shares the origin s...

Most banks want the casino loan. Few understand the full scope of what tribal banking actually looks like, and what it takes to do it right.

In this episode of Travillian Next, host Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Mike Lettig, Senior Managing Director and Group Head of Native American Financial Services at Huntington Bank, and Jackson Brossy, Vice President of Native American Financial Services at H...

What does it take to build a $9 billion community bank and stay independent doing it? Joe Dively, Chairman and CEO of First Mid Bank & Trust, breaks down the M&A strategy, leadership philosophy, and culture-first approach behind one of the Midwest's most extraordinary community banking stories — including a dividend streak dating back to 1879, eight acquisitions built on decade-long relationships, and a succession pla...

Scott Hildenbrand, Head of Depository Fixed Income at Piper Sandler, joins Travillian Next for a conversation on balance sheet strategy and the forces shaping banking in 2026.

In this episode, Travillian’s Brian Love and Andrew Liesch sit down with Hildenbrand to discuss what he’s hearing in bank boardrooms across the country. From the disconnect between bank earnings and valuations to execution strategies in a volatile ...

Community banks widely recognize the value of diversity in the boardroom, yet many institutions still rely on the same limited recruiting networks when searching for new directors. On the latest episode of Travillian Next, Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Jennifer Docherty, Senior FIG & Capital Markets Strategist at Performance Trust Capital Partners and Co-Founder of Bank on Women, to unpack wh...