To understand the events of last year, we first must understand how the banking system works. John Maxfield covers both in the opening session of this year’s symposium.

Banking changed forever on July 5, 1982, when a rapidly growing bank in Oklahoma City was declared insolvent by the OCC. Here’s the story of Penn Square Bank, told by Steve Plunk, the lead OCC examiner in charge of its failure.

Ross McKnight oversees InterBank from his 56,000-acre ranch in Throckmorton, Texas. The fourth-generation rancher paid $5000 for the bank in 1988 and has since grown it from $14 million to $4.5 billion in assets. Today, it is the top-performing commercial bank in the country.

Jennifer Chandler nearly drowned as a child, fell out of a second-story window a few years later, suffered a stroke at age twelve and lost her older brother later in life to mental illness. Today, she is a top executive at Bank of America and president of its Dallas market. In this session, Jennifer shares her personal and professional journeys.

At the symposium last year in Philadelphia, we focused on the dynamics of bank failures. Three days later came the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. This year in Dallas the focus is on successful bank analogs. In this session, one of the best connected investors in the space dissects the business models of high-performing banks.

In 2010, Aaron Graft, a thirty-year-old lawyer from Dallas, Texas, raised $45 million to buy a floundering bank in the city’s northern suburbs. Today, that bank is rewiring the flow of payments across the American trucking industry. It is one of the most compelling stories in banking.

The shuttering of management training programs at many banks, compounded by industry consolidation, has left an education gap in the industry. One institution helping to bridge the gap is the Pacific Coast Banking School, led by CEO Gretchen Claflin and joined in this session by Bank of America assistant vice president Michael Parrish.

Mark Lynch spent twenty-five years helping Wellington Management Co. become one of the most influential capital allocators in the banking sector. Today, he manages his own portfolio of investments in more than fifty community banks.

Norm Bagwell is Dallas’ consummate banker, renowned for his ten lessons in leadership. He has watched the story of Texas banking unfold since joining MBank in 1985. He later served as the Dallas market president for Bank One (later Chase), before joining Bank of Texas in 2008 as CEO. (Today he serves as chairman.)

A rundown of new laws, regulations and legal cases that should be on bankers’ radars, courtesy of Jim Barresi, head of the financial services practice at Squire Patton Boggs.

In 2021, a financial technology company from Salt Lake City raised a $100 million series A investment round, tying the record for the largest series A in Utah history. Led by Rhett Roberts and two brothers, LoanPro is also working to alleviate poverty in Cambodia.