Below is the 2015 CFO Conference agenda for your review. To the right (under resources) are PDFs of the presenters’ PowerPoint presentations for your reference.

An email has been sent to the registered attendees with the password to access these documents. 

If you have any questions, please contact Corbett Cutts at (916) 438-4428. 

***2015 Agenda***

8:00 – Registration

8:20 - Welcome and Introductions

8:30 - Market-Driven Strategy or Obsolescence – It’s Our Choice
John E. Oliver, President, Laurel Management Systems, Inc
In the financial services sector there has been a tendency to plan tactically and financially rather than strategically. This has been combined with an unwillingness to challenge our own biases about the relevance of our business model and, as individual institutions, to question our underlying value propositions from the point of view of our marketplace rather than our own internal perspective. No business model in the world will be successful in the long term if it is not meeting some need or desire in its marketplace.

This session will explore the ongoing crisis of diminishing relevance for traditional financial services providers and why that crisis creates a compelling need for more professional strategy development. It will compare genuine strategic thinking to the typical financial and business planning that we usually undertake and go on examine the whole-system planning methodology as the most effective means of developing relevant market-driven strategy to ensure ongoing viability.

9:25 - The Five Levels of Leadership
Rick VanDermyden,Leadership & Personal Development Trainer with The John Maxwell Company
“Everything rises and falls on LEADERSHIP.”  Your bottom line depends on the effectiveness of your leaders. So, what’s the best way to increase the effectiveness of your leaders?

The Solution: The Five Levels of Leadership is a blueprint for developing a leadership culture.

1. Level 1 – Positional; people follow you because of your position
2. Level 2- Relational; Develop a people oriented leadership style. Strike a balance between care and candor
3. Level 3- Is the production level, cast a vision, and lay out a strategic plan to achieve the vision, measurable goals, strengths and skills
4. Level 4- is the people development level; recruiting, positioning, developing, and measuring
5. Level 5- The pinnacle level of leadership

10:20 - Networking Break

10:35 - Alignment of Executive Compensation with Your Strategic Plan
Eric Johnsen, Executive Benefits and BOLI consultant, Equias Alliance & Mike Blanchard, CEO, Blanchard Consulting Group
The landscape surrounding total compensation practices in community banking has changed. The economic climate, increased regulation, public perception and shareholder activists have all had an impact on today’s banking compensation environment. The ultimate result of these changes – some by necessity, some by choice and others by regulatory force – has yet to be fully determined. The one certainty is there will continue to be change.

Highlights and Learning Objectives:

• Trends in Executive Compensation: Status of annual cash incentives, long-term retention incentives and executive benefits overall.
• Performance-Based Compensation Strategies for Community Banks: Discover the keys to having an effective and motivating annual cash incentive plan and what banks are using in respect to equity-based/longer-term incentives and deferred compensation.
• Executive & Director Non-Qualified Benefits and Bank-Owned Life Insurance: Learn about the various types of executive benefits and how BOLI can be used to help your bank deal with the changing executive benefit environment. 

11:30 - Taking Control of Interest Rate Risk with Hedging Strategies:  Adding Derivatives to the “Tool Kit”
David J. Sweeney, Managing Director, Chatham Financial & 
Benjamin M. Lewis, Director, Business Development, Financial Institutions, Chatham Financial
More than six years after the drop to nearly 0%, bankers continue to prepare for the inevitable tightening of short-term interest rates. While some liability-sensitive banks have benefitted from a “wait-and-see” approach, now may be the time to add swaps or caps to the toolkit. We will discuss the mechanics, costs and benefits of basic interest rate hedging products, including a strategy that provides significant savings compared with traditional match-funding techniques.  The session will highlight how frequently misunderstood hedge accounting standards can be applied in a straightforward way when the “Path of Least Accounting Resistance (“POLAR”) is followed. 

12:20 - Lunch

1:20 - New Policymaker, New Fed Policy
Dr. Jim Cunningham, Associate Professor of Clinical Finance and Business Economics at the Marshall School at University of Southern California 
A review of what has happened to the American economy in recent years: a housing bubble, a financial crisis, the Great Recession, and a stagnant recovery. Lack of investment, as shown by trillions of excess reserves in the banks, is due to discretionary monetary policy and reduced incentives to hire and supply labor. A hopeful sign is the commitment to a new, rules-based monetary policy by Federal reserve Chair Janet Yellen.

2:15 - Networking Break

2:30 - The Future of Community Banking
Joshua S. Siegel, Managing Partner and CEO, StoneCastle Partners, LLC Chairman and CEO, StoneCastle Financial Corp.
Consolidation is continuing to occur, but what are the effects of 10,000 banks becoming 5,000? How can bankers extract value and successfully manage their enterprise in this cycle? Joshua Siegel, CEO of StoneCastle, will detail key shifting paradigms including technology usage, succession planning, and capital management including how each relates to the underway consolidation wave. 

3:25 – Yield Is an Opinion, Cash Flow Is a Fact
Ryan Hayhurst, Managing Director, The Baker Group
Growth in bank investment portfolios traditionally happens in periods of excess liquidity like we’ve experienced for the last seven years. Historically this has been when the economy is weak, loan demand has waned, and interest rates are low. To achieve an additional return for our shareholders, we typically invest in higher yielding securities with negative convexity characteristics like Mortgage Backed Securities, CMO’s, or Callable Agencies. To enhance our portfolio performance we regularly invest in negatively convex instruments in which cash flow decreases when rates rise and increases when rates fall. In this section we will identify specific security selections that will provide a balance between extension and contraction risk, which provides us rate sensitivity through consistent cash flows.

• Best of Both Worlds – Extension Risk Protection and Call Protection with Low Loan Balance MBS
• Certainty of Cash Flow – Short WAM MBS Fit the Bill
• GNMA MBS – Prepays from Buyouts and HPI (Home Price Increases)
• Structured CMOs – Buy the Curve with Limited Extension

4:20 - Concluding Remarks

4:30 - Adjourn