Pub. 4 2015 Issue 9

l e a d i n g a d v o c a t e f o r t h e b a n k i n g i n d u s t r y i n k a n s a s 10 Rich Wolford, American Bankers Association; Brian Chamberlin, Andover State Bank, Andover; KBA Chairman Bob Leftwich, John Lehman, The First National Bank of Girard, Girard; Jim Turner, American Bankers Association. ECONOMIC OUTLOOK AND RISK MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE F ORMALLY KNOWN AS THE INVESTMENT Conference, the KBA Economic Outlook and Risk Management Conference was underway at the DoubleTree Hotel in Wichita in early November. Elliott Eisenberg opened with an economics presentation that was enthusiastic about household spending. Families have repaired their balance sheets and have more income to spend. He noted that student debt remains high, however high debt with higher level education seems to result in good debt but lower student loans due to drop-out or incomplete degree results in lower employability and greater default rates. Eisenberg noted that corporate investing is down due to a strong dollar and decreased exports. Oil is a wildcard with low prices and growing unemployment in the industry. With the exception of automobiles, manufacturing is down. Ag and other commodity prices are declining but e-commerce is growing. Related to increased household spending the service industry is booming with hotels and restaurants thriving. He doesn’t think a recession is in the near future with no sign of inflation and unemployment low. Estimating that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates slowly he predicts that prime may hit 3.5% by December 2018. Changing rules and regulations have appeared in many areas of banking including liquidity management. Greg Doner, FIMAC Solutions, provided necessary steps for a liquidity funding plan. Managing investments with liquidity in mind requires a monitoring program and stress testing. He gave examples of factors to consider for contingency funding plans and discussed the role of ratios in the monitoring process. KBA President Chuck Stones gave remarks on the political climate at the state and federal level. He noted that the Shelby Bill, the only meaningful regulation relief legislation out of the Senate, passed out of committee on a partisan basis and is now wrapped in spending legislation. He led an interesting exchange, polling bankers on where they saw the outcome for the Presidential race in one year. There were three concurrent sessions that included, “Portfolio Income or Portfolio Liquidity? Can’t We Have Both?” By Chris Thompson, Country Club Capital Markets; “EVE-NII Analysis Overview,” by Emily Hollis, ALM First; and “Leadership Succession: A Critical Component of Strategic Planning”, by Michael Richter & Adam Fiedor, KPMG Corporate Finance. The conference wrapped up with a session on bank technology trends. Mark Scholl, Wipfi, gave a presentation titled, “Strategic Technology Planning: The Road Ahead.” Scholl discussed remote access technology for efficient support without the requirement of traveling to location for testing and assistance. He gave an overview of managed service models for items such as e-mail, human resources, payroll, document retention and core services such as imaging, EFT and loan processing. Hosted services alleviate the worry of patch management and capacity issues. They also allow small business access to IT specialists and services with enhanced disaster recovery and overall better security. The next Economic Outlook and Risk Management Conference will be held in Topeka on November 10, 2016.