The Rise of the Chief Deposit Officer with Brian Love from The Travillian Group

speaker-1 (00:20.718)
Well, hey everybody, and welcome back to the Community Bank Podcast. This is the podcast by Bankers for Bankers. I’m Caleb Stevens, Vice President of Marketing for SouthSouth Bank’s Capital Markets Division. Today we’re bringing you another backstage interview, this time from our Deposit Conference in Chicago. I caught up with Brian Love from the Traveling Group to talk about talent and deposits and what it takes to find a chief deposit officer and why that role is quickly becoming one that more and more banks are adding to their executive team. And speaking of gathering deposits, one of the best ways to win more of them is through a long-term relationship with a client. And one of the best ways to build that long-term relationship is to offer a long-term fixed rate loan. But you know the problem: long-term fixed-rate loans create a lot of interest rate risk. And so that’s why we created the ARC program. We got tired of seeing community banks like yours lose out to the big banks on long-term fixed rates. And so with ARC, you can lend fixed out to 20 years.

Why you book a floating rate on your balance sheet and earn up to 2% of the loan amount up front in fee income? The best part is there’s no derivative on your books, no hedge accounting, just a simple floating rate for you and a simple fixed rate for your borrower. So if you’re not sure where rates are headed and you want a strategy to win more loans while keeping a healthy balance sheet, clicking the link below to book a call with our team. Now let’s jump into my conversation with Brian Love.

speaker-2 (01:58.68)
All right, well Brian, we’re sitting here backstage at our deposit conference in Chicago, and I’m just doing a series of impromptu interviews here, so we’ll see how this goes. we’ll yeah, I don’t know what we’re gonna talk about. But for folks that missed our last podcast, which w when did you come on our podcast? It was at least it’s at least a year ago. Maybe longer than that. Tell us about yourself and what you do at the Travillion Group.

speaker-0 (02:18.166)
May have been a little longer than.

speaker-0 (02:23.916)
Yeah, I appreciate that. Good to see you in person, Caleb. And good for a Philadelphian to be talking to an Atlant an Atlanta. We may have timestamped this by saying that and by the time this sees the light of day, we’ll know the outcome. Yeah, that’s right. I also also heckled someone on stage for being outside of Atlanta.

speaker-2 (02:30.786)
Yeah, our teams play tonight, so

speaker-2 (02:43.818)
I I thought he was gonna kick you off and say I’m not even gonna take your question.

speaker-0 (02:47.93)
He actually kind of corrected me because I think they’re like 90 minutes outside. They probably don’t even like to call themselves Metro. so no, I I am the head of banking and fintech at Travillion. I’ve been here for almost 11 years, it’ll be next early next year. Travillion’s been around for almost 30 years.

speaker-2 (02:53.164)
Probably don’t. Yeah, they probably don’t.

speaker-0 (03:09.772)
And we have a really interesting space in the market where we know all all the investment bankers in the space. And then it just made sense over time to create this community bank division because that’s their clients. So here I entered the fray, and having been a community banker for ten years prior to being a recruiter, I actually walked the walk.

I was the guy on the streets bringing small business loans in, consumer deposits, and then for a large period of time, commercial deposits. So I think I have kind of an interesting view, especially being at the deposit conference, having been someone who really I actually loved bringing white whale low-cost depositors to my bank. It was like etched into

My day-to-day, how am I going to get big money into the into the bank so that we can turn it around into loans? And that’s always stayed with me. And in the ten or eleven years now I’ve done recruiting, I’m proud of the time I was a banker because I understand, in essence, what er all these banks are trying to accomplish. And not to go on on that tangent, I’ll bring it back and just say we now help banks all over the country as small as eighty million in in depo in deposits.

To 30 billion in deposits. FinTechs, tech forward banks, everything in between, we help them find senior leaders, C suite, board members even, really across the industry. And we love doing it. We’ve got a great team, nice little niche group, and we love what we do.

speaker-2 (04:48.152)
Well, you guys wrote an article and I’ve cited this, listeners to the show may have heard me cite this in previous shows over the past few months, but you guys wrote an article recently talking about how now fifty percent of bank CEOs are at least sixty-five years old or older. And you said in the article twenty years ago that number was only about thirty percent of bank CEOs or sixty five or older.

You guys do a lot of work in recruitment, particularly when it comes to the succession side of things. And I’m just sort of curious how much of the consolidation that we’re seeing is regulatory pressure, technology pressure, need for scale, versus it’s just and not to be too hard on the boomers, but it’s just a bunch of boomers that r run run all these banks and now they’re nearing retirement age and their boards are probably of the same generation by and large.

And it’s just like, you know, we we got a lot of stock and if we if we’re a privately held bank, that’s an expensive bank stock to to never liquidate. So how much of it is that in your mind versus these outside pressures affecting the industry?

speaker-0 (05:55.758)
So that’s a that’s an amazing question to ask. And you know, we are a boutique, so my responses are from a sliver of the industry. But my take on that is in the banks that I talk to every week, there is some of that boomer mentality. And I’ve talked to a few banks where, you know, I still feel like they they’re running it circa two thousand.

even their compensation structures and the efficiency ratios kind of dictate that, you know, they’re running it lean and mean. And not to say a bank shouldn’t do that, but things have changed. There are better ways to be efficient, and then there are other ways to attract talent that you need. You need to think differently about compensation. And I think the gut check instinct is

I don’t even want to confront this. I don’t want to confront the disruption. It’s easier for us to sell. Now there was a deal announced, and this is getting a lot of publicity. It was announced yesterday. It was a client of ours, Capital Bank in Rockville, Maryland, was acquired by People’s Bank in Marietta, Georgia. Sorry, Ohio. Okay. There is Marietta, Georgia. Marietta, Ohio. And the CEO of Capital Bank is

Early 50s, mid-50s, the CFO is late 30s. And they sold the bank. Okay, so that actually defeats that that thesis around succession, let’s get out of this, don’t even want to confront it. They actually sold at the top of their game great metrics, great ROA, great ROE. So that’s that actually kind of like pulls me in the other direction of thinking about MA.

There’s shareholder succession, which is even more, you know, I think powerful to consider right now than I guess maybe the leadership succession. So I don’t know, in in in closing, I do think deposits are the key to most MA.

speaker-2 (07:48.78)
Yeah, yeah.

speaker-0 (07:58.612)
capital had very interesting fee revenue business lines, national business lines, credit cards, really interesting things that now this other bank can fold into their fray. It also delivers them a huge footing into a geography they were already in just a little bit. I think also geography is a is a huge piece of of MA. Yeah, yeah. Securing a metropolitan area. So what

speaker-2 (08:21.902)
What do you look for in top talent and how do you find it? So, one thing I’ve often thought about is your top talent, probably, maybe not in every case, but if you’re if you’re out there looking for a job, you’re either unhappy where you are or you feel like you’re not reaching your potential, or you know, maybe maybe you know there’s a short runway and maybe you’re not doing too well. if you’re a stellar superstar banker.

and you’re at a good company, you’re probably not actively looking for a job in every case. So how do you sorta sell a new opportunity to somebody who you think would be a great fit somewhere, but they’re killing it where they are and they’re super happy and they’re taken care of. How do you kind of paint that picture when you’re trying to sell a recruit on a new position you’re hunting you’re hunting for?

speaker-0 (09:08.418)
That is the tricks of the trade, man. All right. That’s so you may have to put like a you know, a firewall in here for for paid viewers because this is real interesting. That’s right. You want to hear Brian Love tell you his secrets. It’s all about storytelling. I I mean I love what I do, but if someone called me and told me that I could build something.

speaker-2 (09:12.258)
Yeah.

speaker-2 (09:21.058)
Subscribe to our Patreon or whatever you can.

speaker-0 (09:38.798)
Create wealth, be a huge influencer to the new to the next vision and strategy of a new organization that was uninhibited by legacy woes, you got my attention. And pardon me, my trivillion people don’t have to worry about anything. But I’m just saying, like if I’m a bank executive and I’m in, you know, maybe a cog and a wheel or the number two or number three, and I just know I’m never gonna get past somebody, that storytelling.

Is going to get my attention. Last thing I’ll say is the identification of candidates is important. You can’t just go out and just like, you know, throw stuff against the wall. You need to make sure that you find banks that have some heritage similar to your clients, asset size, asset classes in their lending practices, deposit generation techniques, so that you can find people who can fit into those cultures.

those products, those services, those teams, really well. And that’s what we do. We do a lot of research and a lot of intake at the beginning of processes to make sure that we hit the nail.

speaker-2 (10:48.596)
So we’re sitting here at the deposit conference. so implied in the name, you’re one of our speakers that we have here. So talk about what you’re gonna kinda hit on for when it comes to deposits. Cause it’s it’s funny, I was thinking this morning five years ago, I’ll never forget, sitting at a conference and someone was talking about like how important deposits were. And it was a time where people were swimming in deposits. And I even heard someone say,

We can’t pay people to leave and get the deposits off the balance sheet. We’re having to shrink our bank ’cause our capital levels are getting stressed from all these deposits. Yeah, total reverse now. How has that impacted your business from a deposit standpoint and how you’re thinking about recruiting and talent?

speaker-0 (11:31.448)
So I’m here, Maureen McKenna and Chris Nichols reached out. They wanted to hear about the advent of the chief deposit officer role. Which again, when I’m there in in my room with with people, I’m gonna I’m gonna pull the room. How many of those banks have a person named Chief Deposit Officer? My guess is.

Less than ten percent of the room’s gonna raise their hand, probably maybe even less than that. It might only be the two people I invited to be on stage with me, which are Katie Klug at Bridgewater Bank and Amber Gerstung from Stearns Bank. They’re both chief deposit officers at mini mini ac Minnesota based community banks that are vastly different. So we’re gonna have a discussion about well, I guess when

When do banks need to consider hiring a chief deposit officer? Where do they come from? What do their backgrounds need to be? How do you compensate someone like that? And also, you know, hear the story of two incredibly talented bankers. Because I think people like to hear how others got to where they are. But more importantly, what are the triggers that these banks need to maybe have someone leading the charge on that?

Sometimes deposits just kind of falls underneath a CFO, maybe even part of marketing or operations. A chief depositor kind of brings it all together, all the divisions together. You know, the funding mechanism that the CFO is overseeing, how they’re communicating with their customers through marketing, what products and services they need that they don’t have or need better versions of. It’s a better bank, usually they’re con commercial clients.

Those are all the things that actually go into a chief deposit officer, but the key thing is someone who can go out and also get big chunks of deposits. It’s really tough to thread the needle on that unicorn. Yeah.

speaker-2 (13:27.402)
So let’s press in on that a little bit more. What would you say to the CEO who says, I I hear you, Brian, but I I compensate my lenders on deposits and I make that part of their incentive grid. So like why do I need a dedicated executive just focused on deposits when it’s sort of implied, like if we’re gonna give you a five million dollar loan, we expect you to bring all your deposits over with you if we’re gonna extend credit to you. Push back, what would you say to someone who’s pushing back there?

speaker-0 (13:54.602)
I mean, I gotta be honest, go back and look. Did they bring their deposits? Or did they just open one DDA and slap a hundred grand in it? Check it out. Or a million dollars in it. Whatever. Yeah. Right? Right. I have some personal experience here. As I mentioned, I was a banker, and the separation between like retail and commercial was like a chasm. And it still exists today at a lot of the banks that are here. The key is you really need to kind of like bring those two worlds together. And

I think the treasury management piece is like the absolute like confluence of that. Because it’s like a retail mindset. When I was out there doing it, I was there at my clients places, you know, their headquarters setting up remote deposit scanners, helping them make sure that their token for their online wires and ACHs was equipped and ready. Yeah, right. It definitely did. so like that is like high touch customer service.

Which d sometimes bleeds out of retail, right? And then you’re servicing commercial clients who cannot have problems with their cash flow day to day. So it really combines those two, and that’s what you know, Amber and Katie are gonna be talking about as well. so I guess my point is the covenants, things of that nature, they’re all fine and dandy, but are you really gonna get a lot you know in commercial real estate?

Are you really gonna get that person or that that business to bring all of their banking at one time? That’s a conundrum. They’re probably banking with multiple banks.

speaker-2 (15:30.51)
Do you have visibility into what those other banking relationships are? That’s a whole other question for banks out there.

speaker-0 (15:36.632)
Well, that’s also that kind of, you know, how good is your commercial lender? Are they transactional based? Some are. Or are they relationship-based, which I think most strive to be? Do they and when you get that application, you usually get a chance to see everywhere they’re banking. You don’t have to go on day one and say, move your stuff from truest. But you can over time plant those seeds, use that service to your advantage.

It’s a long play. By the way, what I do is a long play. I talk to people and four years later I do a search for them. Fantastic. I’m never asking for anything. It’s the same mechanism in community banking.

speaker-2 (16:18.914)
Has AI changed the recruiting search landscape for you much at all? just do people still w w what’s it doing to your side of the bank world?

speaker-0 (16:30.232)
Two things. One, a lot of the manual work that we do to craft really deep submissions that have personal information, compensation, career arc. It has helped us use all of like put all of our notes, aggregate them into really thoughtful dossiers, submissions. So that’s been great because it used to take me hours to put a submission together. Sometimes I used to dread it.

But it’s like the ultimate thing we wind up doing, and then we pass it to the client to review. AI has helped us get better and more efficient with that time of doing that. Because we’re having multiple conversations with these candidates and we’re taking copious notes. So that’s the one thing. It’s more administrative, I would say. The second thing is when we do our research to go live for candidates. We’re never gonna just say, hey, ChatGPT, find me 10 candidates, and then we just, you know, kind of twiddle our thumbs. Never.

We want to find, tell me, the top five biggest CNI banks outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. What are their asset size? What are their executives’ names, et cetera? And then we compile target lists when we go to market. But we still do all the manual work ourselves. There’s no bots, there’s no white noise emails. We’re doing it by phone call, by email, manually, because there’s value in that.

I guess the last thing I would say is sometimes crafting a really good back to the storytelling. Crafting a really good email to get someone’s attention. That is still incredibly important for us to do ourselves. But we will throw it into

speaker-2 (18:12.82)
no doubt. I’d say I’d say eighty percent of the emails I get are written by AI at least now. Sales sales emails, cold emails. Yeah.

speaker-0 (18:21.656)
And what do you do with Delete them all. Delete them all. White noise. Since I started at Travillion, and I’m a creative guy, I love movies. I always thought I’d be a filmmaker. I I think I’m just I don’t know. I feel like I’m kind of more of an animated person. And since I started here, Dave Yankoski, our managing partner, he he always told us the value in standing out and really again, it’s it’s all storytelling. What are the buzzwords?

That we know people want to hear. And it’s not how big your bank is, where it’s located, fully remote. Like it’s what is this gonna look like for you moving forward? How is it gonna help your life? There’s probably more to it than that. But since I’ve started, that has been the single most important thing we do is when we go out for candidates, we tell the story well. We find the things maybe that the bank doesn’t realize are the selling points, and we pull them out. And that’s what we do in our intake process in the first week when we start searches.

And I love it. You get a chance to look under the rug, behind the curtain, and you sniff out the things that candidates are gonna love about it and maybe question about it. And then you confront them, you in a softer way right at the front.

speaker-2 (19:33.102)
That’s good. Well, we appreciate you being out here for our deposit conference. Last question from me as we wrap up. People know on the show, I know I love studying great leaders and leadership. When you bring on an executive who is at a bank and you’re bringing them into an executive role at a new bank, there’s a lot of social capital that that person doesn’t have because they haven’t been at that bank for a long time. There’s a lot of influence they don’t have yet. There’s probably a lot of skeptical people.

Who are saying, What’s this new person gonna be like? What are they gonna do? Are they gonna shake things up? Are they gonna are they gonna understand the history and the heritage of our company? And yet, for whatever reason, the board saw fit to bring someone from the outside and not promote internally, but from a leadership perspective, that’s a big hurdle to clear. How do the best leaders come into a new environment and cast a compelling vision?

While at the same time, I guess sort of respecting the heritage and where the bank was, but also there’s a reason they’re they’re there, and it’s to take the bank, I would assume, somewhere they haven’t been before, and that requires fresh vision. So any any observations from Eucene on that?

speaker-0 (20:45.23)
So my observation comes from years of doing this, but there’s one particular search that we just completed that is the perfect example to highlight. We just placed Len DeVasher from Midwest One out of Iowa at Cashmere Valley Bank in Washington State. Okay. Midwest One, he was their president and COO, about seven billion in assets. Now he is the CEO of a about three billion dollar bank.

And that’s the big thing the board grappled with, internal, external. When they met Len and they realized his character, they knew it would be a good fit. Till the almost the end of the search, there were people that still needed to buy into it. When they met him and they got comfortable with him, it wound up being apparent. Now, I’m gonna pan you’re gonna love this. It’s gonna be feel sound like pandering. John Corbett.

When he was on our podcast many years ago, and I hope he joins again sometime. Yeah, he mentioned two words. And this is what Len exhibited: humility and hustle. I talk about this all the time. Humility relating to people at their at their core human level. I am not your CEO. I am Len. I am Brian. I am Caleb. And then hustle. Get in there, do the dirty stuff.

speaker-2 (21:44.792)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (22:09.592)
Plunge the toilet, so to speak, and let others see that you’ve done it. I mean, who cares if they don’t even see you that you’ve done it? Know that you’re doing it. So those are the two things that I think great leaders have to exhibit to be successful, and they will get buy-in. There’s always gonna be a honeymoon period where there’s some tense moments. They will get buy-in with those two things.

speaker-2 (22:31.574)
That’s good. Yeah, that that’s very similar to Jim Collins’s level five leadership concept from good to great is he says professional will and personal humility and you gotta have both. Personal humility, professional will. I haven’t I haven’t seen a better I haven’t seen a better definition of leadership than that. And that that’s people that we wanna follow, it’s people who are humble but at the same time have the will to get the job done and they’re gonna hustle and are gonna, you know, be right there with their team. So it’s great.

Brian, any final words of encouragement for the bankers listening before we wrap up?

speaker-0 (23:06.626)
Well, we were talking earlier at the conference about how fintechs are disrupting the space and I think

It is going to continue with FinTechs getting their own bank charters. We’re working on a lot of that right now. It’s exciting work. It’s fun work. Talk about storytelling. There’s nothing more fun and exciting about that. So I would say there there will be, because of this r more, I guess, quote unquote relaxed regulatory environment, it’s gonna continue to trail. We looked at a list of about twenty names. My guess is by this time next year.

it’s gonna be three times that of banks that are either conditionally approved or submitted for approval. So I just think, you know, banks are gonna have to really understand that there might be a whole new slew of disruptors coming. and, you know, no better time than now to stock up on good talent and good technology.

speaker-2 (23:59.168)
Love it. Brian, thanks again for being here. We appreciate it.