With eyes to the future, UBB board installs two talents at the top of its org chart

Fifty years to the day after it opened for business as the nation’s first bankers’ bank — with just two employees — it was move-in day at United Bankers’ Bank new Richfield, Minn., headquarters. The office move was short in terms of distance, symbolic in timing, and both practical and strategic, said the bank’s two new leaders, CEO Jim Amundson and President Jennifer Severson, in their roles only since July 2025, as they position the nation’s first bankers’ bank for its next chapter..Amundson, former president and CEO of BankIn Minnesota and one-time community banker, was brought in to UBB at a critical juncture, in part to “work on the business” so that Severson, who joined the bank in 2021 and retains her former position as CFO, can focus on the inner workings of the business, explained UBB Board Chair Curt Johnson, president and CEO of Cherokee State Bank in Cherokee, Iowa..Splitting the executive function into distinct roles filled by two individuals is a departure for UBB, which was led for nearly 35 of its 50 years by the gregarious Bill Rosacker, and more recently by former OCC regulator Dwight Larsen. The hiring strategy speaks to the board’s desire to solidify market share in a country where 12 bankers’ banks and a number of other players offer correspondent services to an evaporating pool of community banks.With its 50-year history duly celebrated in 2025, and the dust from its big move settled, Amundson and Severson are focusing on meeting board and shareholder expectations, while also ensuring the bank remains a strong provider of correspondent services for years to come.Eyes to the futureEven the casual observer can understand that the banking industry is changing. But to those embedded in banking for their entire careers, like Johnson and the other members of the UBB board, the changes underway are “dramatic.” That’s how Johnson viewed the environment last November while commenting on UBB’s new leadership. “We’re seeing a lot of M&A announced here in the last few weeks. That impacts our business as well,” he said.UBB is organized as a cooperative owned by community banks. As the pace of M&A grows, survival demands that the bank expand too by growing market share and/or market footprint, either organically or through acquisition. UBB has done both in the last decade and a half.While a bankers’ bank needs to be profitable because, like all banks, it has shareholders to answer to, the nature of the beast is that it also “wants to provide services to those same shareholders that benefit them and help them be successful as well,” Johnson said. Striking the balance is never easy, especially as the cost of delivering services and developing products increases.Satisfied with UBB’s 2025 earnings, and by its prospects for 2026 as interest rates continue their downward trajectory, Johnson said if UBB achieved between “0.5 to 0.75 percent ROA, we’re pretty happy with that.”Founded as Independent State Bank of Minnesota, UBB predominately served shareholding banks in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa. As it matured, it expanded its reach west to encompass the northern Great Plains, the Pacific Northwest and California. Then it got active in Illinois, the second-largest state in the union in terms of its number of community banks. Illinois was a competitive market, made more so by the failure in 2009 of Illinois Bankers’ Bank.In 2016, UBB merged with Ohio-based Great Lakes Bankers’ Bank, gaining ground in Ohio and Michigan, and converting 100 percent of GLBB’s client list to UBB customers. Its board now has bankers hailing from both those states.UBB has since grown to serve clients in 24 states, with roughly 1,000 customers utilizing its product and service offerings. It is newly active in Kentucky and Tennessee and other southeastern states, Johnson said, because “seasoned relationship officers who have been in the industry for a number of years” approached UBB about the opportunity to come to work for them as their previous employers were exiting the correspondent banking business.“We’ve really become more of a nationwide provider of services,” Johnson added. “Our mission is obviously to support the success of community banks.”Momentum like that must be nurtured or it will stall, and nothing can interrupt momentum like an opening at the top of the org chart. Fulfilling UBB’s mission in light of a changing landscape and a survival imperative that demands growth led the board to be careful as it examined several candidates vying for the top job. Among those who expressed interest in the president/CEO position were Severson and Amundson, an insider and an outsider, though he was more industry adjacent than looking in from the outside.Johnson described Severson as “a true difference maker” for UBB. Echoing Johnson’s praise was Jae Evans, a Michigan banker who was completing his second year as UBB board chair 15 months ago. At the full board’s request, Evans stepped into the role of acting president/CEO after Larsen departed. Citing confidentiality, Evans declined to provide the reason for Larsen’s resignation.“Jen is a top-notch CFO and a top-notch individual,” Evans said. “Just an outstanding person of high integrity, and her leadership is outstanding. I always felt that she had the bandwidth to take on the top job.”The prospect of hiring Amundson, meanwhile, meant UBB could hire “a community banker at heart,” Johnson said. The board was compelled by Amundson’s history as a community banker, having led the 2003 startup of First Advantage Bank, and his work at ICBA’s Minnesota affiliate. “Jim had all of the qualities we were looking for to help us springboard UBB into the future and to continue to be a difference-maker with community banks throughout the United States,” Johnson said.The board interviewed both candidates, and ordered personality testing, which confirmed for them the direction they were already headed was the right one. The board decided to split the CEO and president position into two, and hire both Amundson, 59, and Severson, 46. Without tying their decision to a management rubric such as the Entrepreneurial Operating System, the resulting effect is that Amundson moves into a role that carries the weight of company “visionary” while Severson, better-known to UBB’s 140 or so employees, picks up the mantle of “integrator.”“Ultimately you talk about, not of a two-headed monster, but a two-headed dynamic here,” Evans said. “It became pretty clear that we’ve got a great opportunity. We can recognize the strengths, and the opportunities that Jen brings to the table, but then can expand her role and continue to grow within the organization, but lead in a new way and complement those with what turned out to be the leadership experiences that [Jim] has had over his career.”Two heads; one mind?The UBB board communicated a framework around which its newest leaders should organize their activities, Amundson explained. What they said they wanted was: A financial strategist, a culture and talent builder, an inspirational visionary, and a community banking advocate. “These are the four high level areas that the board is going to hold me accountable to that have been in the back of my mind as I’ve started my initial work and certainly probably spending more time on the culture side of things and the team early on,” Amundson said. “I came in wanting to be reliable, consistent, not too high, not too low, to be a voice of reason.”Severson remains in the CFO role as she adds the presidential responsibilities. Her work as CFO “has certainly been around the financial strategy of the organization,” she confirmed. It’s work that has earned her the highest praise from the current and past board chair.She is also helping Amundson navigate the complexities of a bankers’ bank, “which is a little different animal,” she said. “So there are a lot of things to learn, some of the unique things that our business model presents on a daily basis.”Amundson’s earliest weeks have had him in conversation with employees, meeting clients, attending industry events, as well as “assessing my role from an executive leadership standpoint, the culture of the team, and the vision of where the organization is going,” he said.What has been reinforced for him during these conversations is that “UBB is a well-established, healthy organization doing great things for community banks across the country. “The vast majority of them are really happy with their relationship with the bank and what we’re doing for them,” he said.And while he’s clear on what the board expects from him, he’s still discerning what the team wants, or even what the org chart will look like in 12 months. “The truth is we’re just not quite through all of that yet,” he said. He is striving to achieve better “cohesion between executive leadership, and how we communicate our expectations from a commitment to our customers and the kind of the core behaviors that we expect.”Complicating his challenge is that since almost half of the UBB team works remotely, the bank had been heavily focused on commemorating its semicentennial in his earliest months, and then there was that move during the coldest part of winter.Symbolism and building on a 50-year legacyOn Dec. 15, between 60 and 70 local staff began the task of settling into their new offices on the sixth floor of Two Meridian Crossings in Richfield. The suite provides them 27,000 square feet of Class A office space. UBB’s new headquarters is less than two miles from where UBB occupied 41,000 square feet on three floors of Bloomington’s Southpoint Center since 1990. The old and new offices are actually closer as the crow flies, situated kitty corner overlooking the busiest freeway interchange in the state of Minnesota, the spot where I-494 intersects I-35W.Importantly, the shift from three floors to one in part resulted from employee feedback on workplace surveys. “Being on three floors created some silos in terms of communication,” Severson said. “Being on one floor where you will see people, I think will help.” They also could jettison unused square footage to save money.“It’s a really good team,” Severson added, offering her appreciation for peoples’ professionalism while also crediting the executive team for continuing to “fly the plane” as she and Amundson adapt to the new elevation.The company also celebrated its 50-year anniversary with a series of events last September, including an employee celebration, a customer reception and dinner, a day-long conference, and the screening of a 25-minute video it produced on the bank’s 1975 founding and growth since.Severson has worked at five different banks across her nearly 20-year career, and had been a customer of UBB before she joined the bankers’ bank. She and Amundson didn’t know each other before being paired at the top of UBB’s org chart, however. So while he spends time getting to know UBB, its employees and its customers, she’s working on getting to know him.“Building trust takes time, right?” Severson said. The two meet frequently to discuss how UBB is evolving. “There’s been just a lot of things to address,” she said. “Big things as well as small things.” Both are actively trying to make each other’s jobs easier in terms of how they work and communicate.“Jim was the perfect person to step into these shoes,” Severson added. “I think his general perception and the way that he looks at things is similar to me. Having the right person in the right seat has helped build that trust.”Amundson is likewise complimentary of Severson, saying she functions at a very high level, and is perhaps “the strongest on the team.”As the pair assesses the future, including when Severson will cease being CFO to focus solely on being bank president, Amundson admitted there are “a lot of moving parts.”Evans said the board will leave it up to Severson and Amundson to gauge the elasticity of her “bandwidth” and inform them when it’s evident that her filling two key roles at the bank becomes limiting to her success.Further down the road, when Amundson reaches the age when the golf course beckons more loudly than the office, it’s entirely possible the top two jobs may once again go to one person: Severson. “We didn’t go into it with that major or primary intention,” Evans said, “but we certainly saw that as a solid succession opportunity for further development.”Seasoned leadershipIn 2011, as Severson was completing her MBA with a finance focus at the University of Colorado in Boulder, she was also working in credit at Colorado’s FirsTier Bank, where she managed a small loan portfolio. FirsTier failed in January of that year and the lessons of that failure inform her to this day. “It really formulates how you make decisions, from a credit perspective and from a business perspective,” she said. “I think there’s so much that’s woven into me at this point in terms of all the decisions that were made that I observed and witnessed and lived through that I certainly do not want to ever go through that again.” Severson stayed at that bank as a contractor to the end, calling those days a “crazy” experience. “But all the decisions that led up to that, you could see how it all came together,” she said. “There was some really poor decision-making that happened ... just the assessment of risk in general is really a good lesson, both in the business model and in credit decision-making.”Amundson’s years in banking have also introduced challenges that he said have made him a better banker. Foremost among them came as the Great Recession impacted First Advantage Bank. We did things over the years that I am proud of in terms of not taking on excessive funding and liquidity risks and really sticking to our philosophy and our principles around asset quality,” he said. “That allowed us to survive and come out the other side. But you know, from 2008 to 2011, there were moments when I wasn’t sure ... and being the person who had organized the bank ... I had family as shareholders and close friends as shareholders and all kinds of people within the community. I had 105 shareholders, many of whom were local people I would see in the grocery store, at church or whatever, and feeling that pressure of not knowing what was going to happen and how we were going to navigate through, that was an extremely tough time.”Leadership forged by challenging times can provide clarity and build fortitude, two attractive qualities to UBB’s governing body. Therefore, the decision to split the top job between two candidates came down to the candidates themselves. Evans recounted how he summed things for the full board: “We’ve got a great opportunity here. We can recognize the strengths and the opportunities that Jen brings to the table, and can expand her role and continue to grow within the organization, but lead in a new way, and complement those with what turns out are the leadership experiences that [Jim] has had over his career.”Only a few months in, Amundson wasn’t willing to stake claim to what his impact at UBB ultimately will be, or how long he intended to stay at it. But against the backdrop of continued industry consolidation, and 12 bankers’ banks organized to serve a diminishing number of banks, Amundson said he “would imagine that there’ll be some consolidation” among the bankers’ banks.His success in the job, he said, will see United Bankers’ Bank endure in its space. “It’s hard to say from a financial standpoint that we want to be a $2 billion or $2.5 billion or $3 billion bank because some of that is so dependent on outside factors. But I do expect that we’ll be one of the long-term survivors and we’ll continue to provide strong products and services that our banks need. We’ll have a strong, supportive shareholder base and be providing acceptable returns to them.”Creating an exceptional workplace, Amundson added, is also a primary goal. His five-year goal? “I still want my job,” he laughed.“Anytime down the road where we continue to be relevant and to continue to support our clients is, to me, our success,” Severson countered. “And while UBB’s original niche was smaller community banks, as consolidation happens, those banks get bigger and UBB needs to be able to provide products and services that support those larger organizations, in addition to smaller community banks.”UBB’s largest source of revenue is interest income generated through its loan portfolio, Severson said. “As the banks get larger and need to be able to do larger deals in the range of the banks that they’re competing with, the fact that we can be here to help them by purchasing those loan participations and then sub [participating] them as a service, if need be ... ,” she said. “As we’ve gotten larger, we have a pretty sizable legal lending limit [at $16 million], but we also have a really strong network to help them get those deals done.”And while the board understands that the nature of a bankers’ bank demands a different measuring stick for gauging financial success, it will be looking for leadership to not only improve ROA and ROE, but also its Efficiency Ratio, Evans said.“We’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve structured the balance sheet going forward,” Johnson said. “We do a lot of participation loans. So we’re expecting with the decline in rates that our earnings are going to continue to improve over the next couple years.”“If we could get around 1.0 percent, I think that’s a great ROA for a bankers’ bank,” Evans added.