Last week, more than 150 bank executives and investors filled Lincoln Hall on the second floor of the Philadelphia Union League to engage in a day of learning and networking. Under the soft light of a chandelier from the 1800s, surrounded by the portraits of civic leaders from the past century, the conversation touched on topics from leadership and balance sheet management to the M&A landscape and AI.
Throughout the day, 3 key themes emerged — and one of them is borderline contrarian for banks still operating under a 2022 playbook.
Theme 1: The Technology Ultimatum – Invest or Consolidate
It is interesting to imagine what President William Howard Taft would have thought, had he been sitting in Lincoln Hall last week watching the NEXT Forum transpire from the same seat where he witnessed the dedication of the room in February 1913.
Just 10 months later, the Federal Reserve Act would be signed by Taft’s successor, President Woodrow Wilson.
And 112 years after that, Lincoln Hall sat full of bank executives and investors discussing the impact of artificial intelligence and digital assets on the modern banking system.
The NEXT Forum dedicated two full panels to technology topics; yet tech talk seeped into several other sessions including those aimed at helping banks stay independent and the closing keynote with Ira Robbins, Chairman and CEO of $62 billion asset Valley National Bank, and Brent Beardall, President, CEO and Vice Chairman of $27 billion asset WaFd.
Bank executives at the Forum didn’t mince words when it came to describing the technology imperative. Beardall predicted from the stage that the number of banks between $15 billion and $1 trillion in assets would be halved by the end of the current administration specifically due to technology. “I have been with WaFd for 25 years now,” Beardall explained, “and one of my learnings is you are never there with technology. It’s a journey with no destination. As soon as you implement something, you need to take a critical look at it, and you need to iterate — make it better time and time again.”
That level of consistent improvement may seem out of reach for some community banks which, other panelists warned, could lack the clear processes and data governance required to get real value from vendor solutions.
But the technology narrative at the Forum wasn’t all doom and gloom. The first technology panel of the day highlighted a partnership between Bankwell Financial Group, a $3.2 billion asset bank based in Connecticut, and MANTL, an Alkami Solution Team, which helped the bank bring in $195 million in deposits in two years through its Bankwell Direct brand.
In an afternoon tech panel on novel business models, the President of Stride Bank’s payments division, Jimmy Stallings, shared learnings from his institution’s explosive growth. The understated, family-owned bank based in Oklahoma is a Top 15 Visa global issuer and payments partner to major brands like Chime, Affirm, and Lyft.
Emphasizing the importance of board commitment and infrastructure/talent buildout, Stallings also alluded to the huge opportunities tech partnerships can create. “The other important part is: be careful,” Stallings said, “because the dog occasionally catches that car. And so you really need to be ready for that, because you have no way of predicting who’s going to be the next Chime.”
Theme 2: Flight to Quality in the Fortress Balance Sheet
One of the most interesting industry shifts marked by the discussions at the Forum was the flight to quality — rewarding balance sheet discipline over growth-at-all-costs. Across several different panels, speakers opined about the pre-2022 playbook that prioritized loan growth and stressed capital optimization.
Gary Svec, Managing Director of Investment Banking at Performance Trust Capital Partners, described the state of play explaining, “as an industry … we were making loans in the fours, when market rates were in the fives. You could take no credit risk and get really high credit liquid stuff, 100 basis points above where we were making loans as an industry. You have to ask the question, why? Why are we taking that level of risk, giving up that liquidity, taking on credit risk and operational costs to make a loan because it was a loan.”
On an afternoon panel about capital management, partner and portfolio manager at Endeavour Capital Advisors, Jonah Marcus, revealed that, looking at bank mergers in the last year, outperforming stocks are most highly correlated with low loan-to-deposit ratios and low cost of deposits.
Marcus explained, “you get paid to be lower in loan-to-deposit ratio. You get paid to have a little bit of excess capital versus peers through the multiple. And so I think you can end up in a similar place on a stock price with less risk.”
Turning to Jamie Dimon as a case study in maintaining a fortress balance sheet, Marcus noted that as much as the JPMorgan Chase CEO is peppered with questions about optimizing capital, “he never takes the bait and does it, and he’s been super rewarded by the market … So I think you always want to have a little bit more meat on the bone, on the balance sheet, and I think you actually get paid for it, versus trying to be optimized.”
Theme 3: Culture as Competitive Advantage
It’s no surprise that a conference curated by an executive search firm would surface themes on talent, but people and culture insights weren’t relegated to the session on hiring. They permeated discussions on performance, M&A, and remaining competitive.
In a panel discussion on “Channeling Your Inner ‘Rocky’” to outmaneuver large competitors, Seacoast Bank CEO, Chuck Shaffer, discussed the focused effort his highly acquisitive institution has made to onboard talent from superregional banks. Seacoast has transformed its credit function by bringing in talent with experience around C&I lending, cash flow lending, and other areas that let the $21 billion asset bank compete upmarket. Shaffer puts a strong emphasis on socially integrating new talent. As he noted from the stage, “it really comes down to being very, very focused on making sure you have the right people, the right culture, the speed to market, and then protecting that with your life.”
In a world where megabanks spend more on technology each year than most banks have assets, talent becomes even more imperative. ‘Rocky’ panelist Marya Wlos, the newly minted CFO at Community Financial System, stated, “I am a big believer that if you don’t have talent and the right people, you don’t have anything. And that’s above technology. You need talent to help you understand how to utilize the technology, how to maximize the technology. So I think it’s not [just] crucial; it’s the only thing that matters.”
Talent topics were also present in the conference’s closing keynote. Beardall cited culture and talent as one of the factors that could make or break an M&A deal, while Robbins noted that banks like his are able to attract top talent by giving them the ability to make an impact and feel appreciated in a way they might not at very large institutions.
Connecting the Dots
The themes that emerged from the 2025 NEXT Forum paint a layered portrait of what it means to be a bank competing in the modern era. Culture helps small banks compete despite resource constraints. But the technology gap is real and growing, forcing strategic decisions about business models and M&A. Only the banks that maintain asset quality and a solid funding base may have the runway to execute on the strategies they choose.
This is just the beginning of our post-conference coverage here at Travillian Next. Stay tuned for deep dives on the learnings from individual sessions, and reach out to Chief Research Officer, Amber Buker (abuker@travilliangroup.com), to get involved in next year’s event.
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