— Nick Conway, President, First Western Federal Savings Bank, ICBSD Chairman of the Board
Every director I talk to has heard some version of the same pitch. A core provider, a fintech partner, or a vendor at a trade show promises that artificial intelligence will cut processing time, catch fraud you are missing, and answer customer questions at two in the morning. Some of that is happening in community banks today. Some of it is a demo with good lighting. Knowing which is which has become board work.
That is why I want to see you at the Fall Director and Management Conference, October 14 at McCrory Gardens in Brookings.
These tools are already at work in places that do not make headlines. For example: anomaly detection that flags a pattern a person would take a week to notice, document handling in loan files, drafting and summarizing, so a compliance officer spends the hour reviewing instead of typing. That work buys back time for the calls and visits only a community bank makes.
The risks sit with the board and the management team. When something goes wrong, nobody asks the vendor to explain it to the examiner. They ask you.
A board and management team does not need to write code. They do need to know what the bank has deployed, who owns it, what data it touches, how it is reviewed, and what the policy says. If your bank cannot answer those five questions in a sentence each, October 14 is the place to start.
The morning works through AI in the order a bank actually meets it. Wayne Miller of ICBA opens with the national view. Josh Tollefson of Vantage Point follows with Three Questions Before You Say Yes to AI, the diligence conversation that happens before anyone signs a contract. Eric Pulse of Eide Bailly takes up governance and risk, meaning policy, ownership, and oversight once a tool is running. Anjelica Dortch of ICBA closes the morning on regulation, security, and what comes next. Lunch and a keynote follow, then an SDSU panel and a campus tour.
Bring your outside directors above all, along with your CEO, senior lenders, CFO, and whoever owns compliance and operations.
See you there.