Welcome to the 2025 MIB Annual Convention and Trade Show addition of the MIB magazine. I write this article on a beautiful bluebird day in March, one day after the Spring equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere.
March has always been one of my favorite months. One day, it can be snowing, and the next, it can be a 50-degree sunny day. Being able to say “spring has sprung” is a welcomed opportunity after experiencing another very wintery weather season.
The winter months were busy ones for the MIB. In January, the 2025 Montana Legislature convened. As always, the Association has been up “on the Hill” to represent Montana’s community banking interests. As of the date I write this, the Association has strongly supported the Division of Banking’s budget. I am pleased to write that the division’s budget has been smooth sailing. Further, the Association has been able to successfully fend off the majority of bills that, if enacted, would do harm to Montana’s community banking industry. At the same time, the Association provided its full support to House Bill 434, which was sponsored by former MIB Board Member Kenny Walsh of Twin Bridges. This bill, if signed into law, would address one of MIB’s members’ top priorities, which is to ensure an interactive teller machine is not treated as a separate branch under Montana law.
Turning now to other matters, early in March, the Association hosted its annual Montana Reception during the ICBA National Convention. ICBA LIVE was held in Nashville. Montana cohosted its reception with the Missouri Independent Bankers Association. In recent years, the MIB Board has made the decision to partner with our state associations on a reception due to high cost/expense considerations. This formula has proved to be successful both in terms of proper stewardship of MIB member dues dollars and attendance. The Nashville event drew some 25 Montanans together to celebrate community banking and discuss banking issues.
Now, we turn to the primary theme of this edition of the Community Banker, where you will find all the information needed to attend MIB’s annual convention. The convention will be held July 16-18, and the venue is the Big Sky Resort. We are fortunate to be able to return to Big Sky in July of this year as the association was previously informed we could only book dates outside of the summer season moving forward.
We are also excited about this year’s quality lineup of speakers. MIB is pleased to have ICBA Vice Chairman Mike Burke join us at Big Sky as our keynote speaker. Other great speakers include Melanie Hall of the Montana Division of Banking, Patrick Barkey with the Bureau of Economic Research and Tom Keenan of Keenan & Partners.
The annual golf tournament will be held at the Big Sky Resort Golf Course. And, of course, the ever-popular whitewater rafting trip will be available for those looking for a bit of extracurricular fun for themselves or their families.
MIB’s State Convention is known as the biggest little banking convention in the West. In light of the roster quality of education speakers and fun convention events, we hope to see you, your bank employees and your family, below Lone Mountain this summer. All the information you need to register for the 2025 convention is contained within the pages of this edition of the magazine.
MIB will be traveling to Washington, D.C., during the second week of May as part of ICBA’s Capital Summit to speak with Montana’s congressional delegation. You can be assured that one message MIB will be carrying to our nation’s capital is that MIB’s member banks are not the problem, but rather the solution to the continual problems being caused by the “too-big-to-fail institutions.”
The events of the last several years, such as the SVB failure in 2023 and the Wells Fargo civil liability issues in 2020 relating to opening unauthorized customer accounts, reinforces the importance of MIB, and reinforces the distinction between MIB and other state banking trade associations. That distinction is that MIB has one mission, and one mission alone — to represent the interests of Montana’s state-chartered community banks, period and end of story.
The membership dues paid by MIB’s member banks and associate members are the resources by which MIB carries out that simple yet vital mission. So, on behalf of the MIB Board of Directors and Association staff, we look forward to serving YOUR unique Montana-based interests today, tomorrow and well into the future.
I hope you have a great spring and summer. I look forward to seeing you at the Big Sky Resort in July for great community banking fun.
Sincerely,
James Brown, Esq.
Executive Director
