ICBA Live Recap

The Teslar team had an amazing time in Orlando, FL last week at the ICBA Live conference! Conference attendees Joe Ehrhardt, CEO, Account Executives Colin Savells and David Hamrick, and Director of Marketing, Courtney Martin sat down to discuss their favorite parts of the event.

Everyone was excited to be back with the ICBA. As Joe says, “Though community banking is all about communities, being at ICBA is like its own community and it was great to catch up with friends, customers, other members of ThinkTech 1, the ICBA staff and others that go out of their way to support us and each other every day.” David adds, “In spite of the threat of COVID-19 looming over the conference, attendees were able to connect, laugh, and strategize on how to continue to impact their institutions for good.”

This was Teslar’s second year to attend the conference. In 2019, Teslar won the Banker’s Choice Award for Most Impactful Solution and participated in the ThinkTech cohort. The team was excited to build on those connections. “We got to continue conversations with banks that we met as part of the original ThinkTech cohort, as well as talk with new banks looking for solutions to help them become more efficient,” says Colin. Joe added that “it was great to get to know the ThinkTech Cohort 2 this year and see all their hard work turn into solid products and demonstrations at ICBA Live. I was very excited to have the honor to present the new Banker’s Choice award to Donald Hawkins, CEO of Griffin Technologies and wish his team the best of luck in 2020.”

Since last year’s conference, our Account Executives have had many deep, albeit remote conversations with ICBA member banks, but as David says, “while the remote conversations over the last year have been rich, nothing compares to face-to-face opportunities like the ones we were afforded at our booth in the exhibit hall.” Courtney jokes that she had to continuously remind David of the “no handshake” policy put in place due to COVID-19 threats.

Everyone agrees that one of the best parts is building new relationships with community bank leaders from across the country. Colin adds, “As a team, being able to talk face to face with banks to hear the problems they are trying to solve is priceless. We are a platform that has been built on feedback from banks, and the bankers who attend the ICBA conference are instrumental in this process.”

Lastly, Joe expresses thanks to “every banker that got up at 6:00am after both a time zone change and a daylight savings time change to hear me talk about how they can automate their banks in 2020 while not breaking their bank operations or changing who they are and what makes them special. I personally thought we might have no one, then one person showed up ten minutes before start, and then just a couple minutes before start, a lot of bankers showed up and we probably had 25 or so in the room. It was a great group.”

Teslar is so grateful for another great year at ICBA Live. The connections, education, and feedback on our solution are so valuable to our teammates and company. We’re looking forward to another great time next year!