After around two years of preparation, we are ready to welcome our first cohort of apprentices into the Financial Services Academy this fall. As I write this, banks have started announcing their hired apprentices, and seeing everything come together, knowing what this program could mean for our industry, it’s like watching a page turn in the history of the Association.
FSA will host 30-35 apprentices across 17 banks, spanning the state. I’m excited to report that despite just getting started, FSA is already growing. The number of participating banks is set to double in our second year with 35 banks signed up to host apprentices in the 2027-28 school year. Our programming will also expand to offer two banking track options for apprentices – the Retail Banking apprenticeship that starts this fall, plus a new Banking Operations Specialist apprenticeship that will be added next school year. Reach out to Alyssa Rodriguez, FSA’s partnerships & marketing coordinator, at [email protected] to sign up for communication showing how the program unfolds with our inaugural class and new opportunities that continue to come available as this historic new program comes online.
There are plenty of other ways for your institution to keep your employees involved with the Association for the rest of the year. Join us in French Lick for a reimagined Annual Convention (more on that coming soon) Sept. 13-15. As part of Convention, we will induct our eighth class of Leaders in Banking Excellence. We encourage you to come to Convention and celebrate this year’s honorees.
Mark your calendars now for Banking on Women at its new location – the Embassy Suites in Plainfield – Nov. 4-5. We also have dozens of single-day seminars, cohort forums, and webinars to further your professional development and career goals.
Be sure to also join us for our Annual Washington Trip Sept. 28-30. Our numbers dipped a bit last year amid the chaos of our trip overlapping with a government shutdown, and we would like to get our representation back up to normal levels this year. Indiana has representation on the banking committee in both the House and Senate right now; the value of that kind of access is something that cannot be overstated, so I challenge each member bank to send one more person to Washington this year than you did last year so we can make the voice of Hoosier banking heard in the halls of Congress.
Advocacy is not limited to Washington or the Statehouse. We also have a new grassroots initiative this year – Take Your Lawmaker to Work Day. We’re encouraging bankers to invite lawmakers not just to lunch or an event, but to come to your office and see the inner workings of how a bank operates and their constituents who make it happen. Reach out to Connor Wong, our vice president of government relations, at [email protected], for details on how you can take part in this initiative and the support the Association can offer.
