Road to BISA: Editor’s Choice

Like many of you, Bank Investment Consultant is decamping to Florida this weekend for the BISA conference. I’ll be there with Samantha Allen, one of our senior digital editors, and Mike Schott, the publisher of the magazine. Sam and I have been poring over the conference schedule to make a game plan for our coverage.

These days, we have to have such a plan for conference coverage, which should appeal to an old economics major like me because it’s a case study on allocating scarce resources. As an aside, it also makes me remember how much easier conferences were before we all had websites and Twitter feeds, especially for a weekly or monthly publication. And yes, I realize that was one of the underlying reason that weekly and monthly publications flirted with irrelevancy—some would say married—and why we all now have websites and Twitter feeds. (I’m not saying it’s not ironic, I’m just saying it used to be easier.)

Anyway, we have our plan. First, we had one of our regular contributors write two pieces recently that we dubbed “Road to BISA” where he talked to two of the keynotes speakers. You can see them here and here. Plus, we’ve identified several sessions that Sam and I will be attending. Bearing in mind that conference schedules can change (and some sessions are never as good as you expect), here are the sessions that piqued the interest of the editorial staff of Bank Investment Consultant.

We’ll both be at the three short sessions on Sunday that officially open the conference entitled “The Macro Economic Environment.” Industry predictions and baseball make for an interesting combination (The third session, “From Bonds to Baseball,” is being delivered by Tom Ricketts, the chairman of the Chicago Cubs.)

After that, it gets tough because of all the concurrent sessions. But on Monday, I’m planning to go to the 8:30 session “Insight & Understanding for Today’s Markets.” The markets and investments are an ongoing part of our coverage and one that I’d like to enhance so I’m looking forward to gaining some insight and understanding.  At 10:45, I’ll be at the “Planning for Health Care in Retirement.”  I especially look forward to this one as it describes a major concern of our readers. Meanwhile, Sam is planning to go to the 9 a.m. session “Selling Financial Services to Women and Couples,” which also has been a major part of our coverage recently; as well as “Strategies for Developing Successful Advisors.”

We’ll both be attending “Money Rules to Help Your Clients Manage Retirement Income—And the Other Financial Challenges They Face” by Jean Chatzky from the Today Show. After that, we’ll also both be at “Compensation, Beyond the Grid.”

Later, I’ll be attending “How Bank B/D Programs Can Better Compensate in the Advisory Business” and then “Bridging the Organizational Divide—Sharing Success Stories.” Those are both broad descriptions so there are many directions these discussions could take, but they sound inherently interesting so I’m hopeful for both of them. We’ll both be at the short session late that day on “BISA President’s Message and Awards Recognition.”  And I’ll be at “Bringing On Tomorrow.” I’m not sure what to expect, but how can you pass on the CEO of AIG?

The next morning starts with a bang with the Regional/Community CEO Summit, which I’ll be attending while Sam is at the Credit Union Executive Roundtable. And later, I’ll also be at the three short sessions that end the conference, the bookend pieces to the opening sessions, entitled “Looking to the Future.”

I hope to meet as many of you there as possible. And you can always stop by and see Mike in the exhibit hall.