Thursday, April 16th- Friday, April 17th, 2026 Mystic Lake Event Center Prior Lake, MN

Join us for the United Bankers’ Bank ALMEdge Conference, April 16–17, 2026, at the Mystic Lake Event Center in Prior Lake, Minnesota, where community bankers will gather to explore the future of asset liability management by taking a strategic look at the past, present, and what’s ahead. Whether you attend in person or virtually, this year’s conference will help you navigate the financial flux capacitor of 2026 with insights tailored to community bank balance sheets, with presentations from UBB’s Director of ALM Strategy, Scott King-Ellison, Chief Investment Officer, Ben Eskierka, and a special guest presenter, Jim Nowak. If you plan to attend in person, make sure to jump into the DeLorean on Thursday night and join us for a “Back to the Future” networking reception featuring refreshments and networking with fellow bankers and UBB team members.  Make plans now to join us for this year’s ALMEdge Conference and gain the insights you need to confidently guide your bank into the future.

Click here to register now!

https://cvent.me/mRlBk1

I am Scott King-Ellison and I am honored to step into the role of Director of ALM Strategy at United Bankers’ Bank. It is a privilege to serve our community of banks and to build upon the strong foundation laid by my predecessor, Jim Nowak. His leadership and insights have been instrumental in supporting our customers, and I look forward to carrying that legacy with a continued focus on strategic balance sheet management, proactive risk analytics, and tailored ALM guidance. With over two decades of experience designing, implementing, and leading institutional analytics programs, I have had the opportunity to advise a wide range of financial institutions. Throughout my career at Regan Capital, UBS Financial Services, Piper Sandler, and Wells Fargo, I have provided asset and liability management, investment strategy, and enterprise-level balance sheet consulting to clients including owners, chief executive officers, presidents, and chief financial officers of traditional and fintech banks as well as credit unions. No matter the organization, my focus has remained consistent: to deliver strategic insights that enhance bottom-line performance, maximize long-term value, and provide trusted, fiduciary-level guidance.
 
The mission of UBB—to help community financial institutions grow while enhancing shareholder value and supporting a rewarding workplace—aligns perfectly with the values that have shaped my own career. I approach every client engagement through a disciplined three-step process: delivering customized analytics, applying expert interpretation, and crafting strategies that optimize asset and liability structures. As part of a team driven by the principles of putting Customers First, acting with Integrity, and promoting Empowerment, I am excited to offer meaningful, data-backed solutions that support your long-term success. I look forward to working with you and your team as a trusted business partner.

Scott King-Ellison
Director of ALM Strategy
[email protected]
Cell: 612-608-0247


 

I may have been the happiest person alive yesterday.  Why you ask?  Well, The Bureau of Labor Statistics had to finally admit that the employment data they published monthly for all of 2023 (likely through the rest of this of this year as well) was wayyyyyy off!  How off you ask?  Well, just under 70,000 jobs per month were overstated in the 12 months ended March, 2024.  Employment data will be reduced by 818,000 jobs in the January, 2025 benchmark revisions.  This was the second largest downward revision in history.  The only one larger was after the great financial crisis, where business bankruptcies and bank failures were well above historical norms and our recession was much longer than typical.  This was the largest overstatement during a supposed "booming economy."  Remember "Bidenomics?"

Yes, I am going to gloat a little because I have taken some abuse on this subject matter and my opinion on the actual health of the U.S. economy over the last year!  I first started pointing out the labor data discrepancies in in July, 2023.  I wrote a blog post back on July 11, 2023, that is still available for your review on this site, entitled "Getting Harder and Harder to Believe."  It was all about the large discrepancy between government data and private sources of labor data.  I then followed up with a series of posts that pointed out more labor and GDP discrepancy entitled "Bidenomics or BS?".

Why do I mention this today?  Well, because the window is still open.  By that I mean, this revision to the labor data is a revision to a coincident indicator, one that is used by NBER to officially date the beginning and end of recessions.  The chart below is busy I know, but it is starting to bring into question the theory of a Fed engineered "soft landing."  



The light blue line I call the window.  It is the Fed's recession probit model based on the spread between the 10 year treasury and the 3 month treasury yields.  It tends to lead recession by 12 months on average.  This line is pushed out to September of 2025 which incorporates the typical lead time.  That means the economy is still vulnerable to recession until that window closes.  The dark blue line is a model used by the St. Louis Fed that measures smoothed recession probabilities today, based on NBER coincident data.  It shows that as of June, we are still not in recession.  The maroon line is a probit model I built that marries yields and NBER coincident indicators together. As you can see, the maroon line is now above levels reached in both the 1990 and 2001 recessions.  That brings into question the soft landing scenario, especially given the really bad news on job creation data yesterday.

I bring this up because if the Fed thinks they have engineered a soft landing and only cut rates in 25 bps increments for the next few meetings, it likely won't be enough.  Stay tuned and thanks for letting me gloat a little!