Travillian Next

Brian Love sits down with Provident Bank's Mike Perito, SVP, Head of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations, to talk strategy at a $25 billion bank: why the role exists, how Provident grows deposits by deepening relationships, its core conversion and AI work, and why the best decisions take years, not 90 days. Plus, Mike asks Brian what smaller banks are hiring for and how de novos are chan...

Travillian's Keith Daly sits down with Cornerstone Advisors' Al Dominick to talk bank strategy and execution, bank boards, the next generation of bank CEOs, a change of heart on BaaS, and why tokenization belongs on every CEO's 2027 agenda.

Keith Daly of Travillian talks with Hussain Ali, Head of TMT & FinTech at Hovde Group, about Hovde Group's new fintech practice, his Money20/20 takeaways on AI, stablecoins and payment rails, the outlook for fintech M&A in 2027, what makes a fintech worth buying and whether charter mania should worry sponsor banks.

Brian Love sits down with Nicolet Bank Chairman, President and CEO Mike Daniels, who grew a Green Bay de novo into a $15 billion bank. Mike talks bank M&A, keeping the right people after a deal, scaling past $10 billion, and hiring for hustle.

Keith Daly of Travillian talks with Hatch Bank President Amanda Swoverland about her path from Fed examiner to Unit's Chief Compliance Officer to the top seat at a sponsor bank. Amanda shares the mentors who shaped her, why she treats culture as something you model every day, what it means to give your Legos away, and where Hatch Bank is headed in 2027.

Mid Penn Bank CEO Rory Ritrievi and Stephens' Frank Sorrentino join Travillian's Brian Love to talk bank M&A, liquidity and talent. Rory shares how Mid Penn grew from $550 million to more than $7 billion, how he keeps culture intact through acquisitions and why the bank is pausing M&A to prove its organic growth engine. Frank breaks down why crossing $10 billion changes how investo...

This week, Travillian headed to Chicago for The 2026 Deposit Conference , and our usual host found himself on the other side of the mic. Between leading a panel on the rise of the Chief Deposit Officer and catching up with industry leaders, Brian Love , our Head of Banking & Fintech, slipped backstage for an interview with Caleb Stevens of SouthState Bank to answer the questions for once. Bria...

Welcome to the second episode of Travillian Next: Investment Banking Edition! Hosted by Dave Yancoskie, Managing Partner & Head of Investment Banking at Travillian, and Adam Yancoskie, Principal, Investment Banking, with guest Avi Upreti, Principal, AI Strategist at Hebbia. Cutting Through the AI Fluff From Guggenheim fintech banker to building the AI tools he wished he'd had in the seat C...

Welcome to the first episode of Travillian Next: Investment Banking Edition! Hosted by Dave Yancoskie, Managing Partner & Head of Investment Banking Search at Travillian, with guest John Butler, Managing Partner & Head of the Insurance Investment Banking Group at Piper Sandler. Secrets To Sustained Success Over Time • Security can no longer be a second hat on the IT manager's desk• AI...

Your deposits aren't as loyal as they used to be. Nationwide's Mark Hackett and Wolf & Company's Jeff Marsico explain why money is on the move, even in a strong economy, and what community banks should do about it. The economy looks good: consumers are spending, the stock market is healthy, and the AI build-out is fueling growth. So why is it getting harder for banks to hold onto d...

At most community banks, cybersecurity sits with an IT manager who already owns hardware, software, vendor risk, and board reporting. AI agents are now exploiting the same access control and segmentation gaps the industry has known about for twenty years, and that job has outgrown one desk. Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Chris Bedel , Founder, President and CEO o...

Many niche banking initiatives rely more heavily on tailored messaging and distribution than on fundamentally differentiated financial products. But building a real growth engine requires a clean slate, a willingness to innovate at the product level, and deep research into the customers a bank wants to serve. Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Mary Kate Loftus, Presi...

Chris Marinac, Director of Research at Brean Capital, breaks down Q2 2026 bank earnings with Brian Love of Travillian. Why margin is just a statistic, why deposits still win, where M&A goes next, and how banks are rebuilding their talent pipeline.

Capital is flowing again for community banks but deploying it well is the hard part. Bridgewater Bank's Joe Chybowski, AllianceBernstein's Michael Howard, and Performance Trust's Matt Shields join Travillian's Brian Love for a roundtable on capital structure, what investors reward, bank M&A, deposits, and succession in 2026. A candid look at what earns investor confidence and w...

Everyone's talking about Banking-as-a-Service. Almost no one has actually built it — and even fewer have done it twice. Patrick Slain has. In this episode, the Stearns Bank fintech lead sits down with host Amber Buker to get real about what building a BaaS program takes: why it's a six-year commitment, how to keep it aligned with the bank's risk appetite, what separates a great fintech...

Stablecoins are moving from the headlines into the banking system, and community banks are paying attention. In this episode of Travillian Next, Alex Treece, CEO and Co-Founder of Stablecore, and Branden Hansen, President at Bank of Utah, join Travillian's Keith Daly to discuss why now is the moment for community banks to act. They cover the GENIUS Act and clearer regulation, a stablecoin mark...

Bank regulation has shifted fast over the last 18 months, and Ian Maloney, Chief Policy Officer at the American Fintech Council, joins Keith Daly on Travillian Next to break down what it means for bank compliance and risk teams. They get into why the prudential regulators are more coordinated, how reputation risk left the exam handbooks in favor of material financial risk, and the first CAMELS rat...

Steve Plunk was the OCC examiner at the center of the Penn Square Bank collapse, one of the most consequential bank failures in American history. He sits down with Travillian's Amber Buker to revisit the oil-fueled bank that fooled the biggest names in banking, the one line on the balance sheet that brought it down, and where that same blind spot is hiding in banks today. A special conversatio...

Brent Beardall, President and CEO of WaFd, Inc., joins Brian Love to tell the story of his rise from a bank file room to the CEO seat. Partway through, he gets surprised on camera by Simone Lagomarsino, the former CEO of Luther Burbank Savings, the bank WaFd acquired. The two cover leadership, the WaFd and Luther Burbank merger, surviving the 2023 banking crisis, and why banking is still a noble p...

Travillian's bank & fintech recap from May 2026: Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer, and Brian Love, Head of Banking & Fintech Search, recap the month's biggest banking and fintech conferences (Finovate, D.A. Davidson, S&P Global, and Alloy Labs in Nashville). The honest, occasionally goofy conversation covers young bank executive talent, succession planning, stablecoin and to...

Rhinebeck Bank President and CEO Matthew Smith joins Travillian Next for a candid conversation about leading a 160-year-old community bank into its next chapter. Six months into the role at the $1.3 billion publicly traded bank in Poughkeepsie, New York, Matt shares how he is thinking about balancing 1950s-style community service with 2026 technology, building a culture of diversity of thought, an...

In this Part 2, on-location episode of Travillian Next, host Amber Buker (Chief Research Officer at Travillian) sits down with Heather Luck, EVP & Chief Financial Officer at Five Star Bank, for a candid, documentary-style conversation filmed inside the bank itself. Heather opens up about the financial discipline behind one of the country's fastest-growing community banks. She walks through...

In this special, on-location episode of Travillian Next, host Amber Buker (Chief Research Officer at Travillian) sits down with Michael Rizzo, EVP & Chief Banking Officer at Five Star Bank, for a candid, documentary-style conversation filmed inside the bank itself. Michael only half-jokingly calls Five Star "a sales organization masquerading as a bank," and that mindset runs through everything...

Most banks want the casino loan. Few understand the full scope of what tribal banking actually looks like, and what it takes to do it right. In this episode of Travillian Next, host Amber Buker, Chief Research Officer at Travillian, sits down with Mike Lettig, Senior Managing Director and Group Head of Native American Financial Services at Huntington Bank, and Jackson Brossy, Vice President of Nat...

What does it take to build a $9 billion community bank and stay independent doing it? Joe Dively, Chairman and CEO of First Mid Bank & Trust, breaks down the M&A strategy, leadership philosophy, and culture-first approach behind one of the Midwest's most extraordinary community banking stories — including a dividend streak dating back to 1879, eight acquisitions built on decade-long re...