Pub. 6 2017 Issue 1

The CommunityBanker 8 President’s Message By Steve Y eakel, CAE VACB President & CEO Engage Eagerly in Excellent Education! M E S S A G E ACB’s strong tradition of targeted education looks to be holding its form in 2017. Are you and your bank taking full advantage of its benefits? Or to put it another way, can you afford to ignore the value of bringing your staff timely information about the best of current practice and coming trends in community banking? I just finished reviewing the evaluations from our recently con- cluded Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering Conference. The ratings of each session presented received overwhelm- ingly positive scores, with the vast majority in the “excellent” range. And yet there is always room for a few more people to attend the sessions like these that we sponsor regularly throughout the year. Our education offerings cover the land- scape, in both subject matter and format. We sponsor quarterly meetings, two-day confer - ences, one-day conferences and scores of webinars. Many conferences are held outside of Richmond. Every major component of banking is covered in one way or another. All of these offerings are highly rated by participants. And despite the fullness of the VACB education calendar, we have debuted a “Bank - ing Essentials” curriculum, and two other new projects are in final development as I write. Katharine Garner does an excellent job of keeping her finger on the pulse of com - munity bankers, to be sure that our program - ming is meeting needs in your bank. Our Education Committee provides her with valuable input as well, and we are always looking for more volunteers for this impor- tant committee. Please help us to help you. Let us know if we can direct our training information to others in your bank, or spend an additional moment with our program announcements when you receive them, to get them into the right hands. We’re doing good work, and we know that our banks will be stronger if more people will take advantage of it.