Keynote Speakers Announced, Papers Selected for 2015 Fed/CSBS Community Banking Research Conference

ST. LOUIS - Community bankers, academics, policymakers and bank supervisors from around the country will meet Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 2015, in St. Louis for “Community Banking in the 21st Century,” the annual community banking research and policy conference hosted by the Federal Reserve System and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). The conference features the latest community banking research and will be webcast live throughout both days.

Speakers and moderators for the third annual conference will include:

• Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen;
• Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard;
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard;
• CSBS President and CEO John Ryan;
• CSBS Chairman/Massachusetts Commissioner of Banks David Cotney;
• Houston Astros President of Business Operations Reid Ryan, founding investor and board member, R Bank and R Corp Financial, Round Rock, Texas; and
• Federal Reserve Division of Consumer and Community Affairs Director Eric Belsky.

The two-day conference will begin at 2 p.m. Central time on Sept. 30 at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Chair Yellen and President Bullard will give opening remarks, along with CSBS Chairman David Cotney.  Governor Brainard will give the keynote dinner address. On the second day, Houston Astros President Reid Ryan will give the keynote luncheon address, which will be followed by a presentation and panel discussion regarding the results of the 2015 National Survey of Community Banks. Ryan, the son of Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher Nolan Ryan, is a founding investor and board member of Round Rock, Texas-based R Bank and R Corp Financial, where his father is also a founding investor and board member, and his brother Reese is chairman of the board.

The conference’s research committee selected a total of 12 academic papers from this year’s call for papers.  Selected authors will present their papers as part of one of three panels throughout both days. Each panel will focus on a specific research topic, including small business and farm lending, community bank performance, and community banking: pre- and post-crisis. All panels will be moderated by an academic researcher and will include a community banker as a discussant.

As part of the final session of the conference, Fed and CSBS officials will present and discuss the results of town hall meetings that were conducted by state bank commissioners across the country this spring and summer, along with the release of the 2015 National Survey of Community Banks. The 2015 survey, developed and administered with the assistance of Cornell University’s Survey Research Institute (SRI), includes questions on prevailing topics surrounding community banking regulations, the narrowing of mortgage lending product offerings, and the evolving mix of other products and services. The survey also includes questions regarding trends in competition and consolidation. This year’s survey drills deeper into compliance costs, asking bankers how much money they estimate they spent last year on personnel expenses, data processing expenses, legal fees, accounting and auditing expenses, and/or consulting and advisory expenses.

A new addition to the conference this year will be the presentation of a case study by a team of undergraduate students from the University of Utah, which won the CSBS inaugural Community Bank Case Study Competition. The study examined how a local community bank, the Bank of American Fork, survived the Great Recession.

Additional information about the conference and the case study competition can be found on the conference website at www.communitybanking.org.