Breakfast & Registration

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Introduction & Welcome

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Base Salary & Salary Administration Best Practices 

Speakers: Jeff Fairchild & Erica Spencer

​Learn how to design and maintain a competitive salary structure that aligns with your organization’s compensation philosophy. This session explores current salary trends, salary benchmarking versus market data, pay grade development and administration, plus salary budget increases and salary increase matrices. The last half of this session will give real-time examples of salary grade administration processes and analysis from the Blanchard Market Comp software system.

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Crowe - Beyond Compliance: Transforming HR Audits into a Strategic Advantage for Financial Institutions​

Speaker: Joy Duce

In today’s highly regulated banking environment, HR audits are often viewed as a compliance exercise, but leading institutions are leveraging them as a strategic tool to strengthen governance, mitigate risk, and align talent practices with business objectives. This session will explore how HR leaders can evolve their audit approach beyond check-the-box reviews to deliver actionable insights across compensation, talent management, and organizational effectiveness. Drawing on real-world examples from financial institutions, we will highlight common gaps, emerging regulatory considerations, and practical strategies to enhance audit readiness. Attendees will leave with a roadmap to transform HR audits into a value-driving capability that supports board expectations, improves operational resilience, and aligns people, pay, and performance.

Break

Cash Incentives

Speakers: Matt Brei & Jen Allen
Discover how to create effective annual cash incentive programs that are market competitive, drive performance, and align with your organization’s strategy. We will cover cash incentive plan design, award opportunity levels, common performance metrics, and best practices for rewarding both executives and employees. At the end of this session, we will walk through an actual case study of goal setting and goal scorecard completion. This real-life example will include examples of executives, producers, and operations employees.

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Kaplan Partners - Navigating Growth as an HR Leader 

Speaker: Alan Kaplan & Mark Nicastro

As banks continue to grow—whether organically or through acquisitions—the challenges of scale become more apparent. Issues like navigating succession for key roles in a larger organization, jumping compensation peer groups, and assessing the scalability of talent become critical factors for success. In this fireside chat with a leading community bank CHRO, this program will highlight lessons learned and share ideas to help banks navigate significant growth.

Lunch

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Equity-Based Incentives

Speakers: Mike Blanchard & Jeff Fairchild
Explore market best practice basics of equity-based incentive plans and “synthetic” equity plan alternatives. We will cover various equity vehicles, vesting practices, performance ties, and the retention focus of these types of programs. After the education portion of this session, we will walk the group through two case studies of equity-based incentive plan design and the rationale for these programs.

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Barack Ferrazzano - The Hidden Risks of Deferred Compensation

Speaker: Andrew Strimaitis

Deferred compensation arrangements are a powerful tool for attracting and retaining talent — but they come with significant legal and tax complexity that many companies underestimate. This session walks participants through the Internal Revenue Code Section 409A framework, the severe penalties that flow from non-compliance, and the practical steps companies can take to design and administer these arrangements correctly. Special attention will be given to issues unique to privately held companies, including equity-based compensation, valuation challenges, and separation pay arrangements.

​​Break

Executive & Employee Benefits

Speakers: Matt Brei & Laura Roth
Gain insight into executive benefit plans and perquisites strategies that help attract and retain high-performing executive leadership teams. We will provide high-level education and market data on various executive and employee-focused programs, including current trends in employee benefits. This session allows for interactive discussions with the audience about success stories at their banks.

Reception / Cocktail Hour​​