Planning for opportunities drives growth; preparing for challenges ensures survival. Despite lingering unknowns like tariffs, governmental tensions, and stubborn inflation, community bankers are entering 2026 with optimism. This positive outlook is supported by the ABA Economic Advisory Committee (2025), which expects modest economic gains in 2026, driven primarily by stronger consumer spending.

The question is: how can you leverage new opportunities while preparing for inevitable challenges?

Explore New Opportunities: Employ a Flexible Planning Model

Let’s say your 2026 strategy includes launching a deposit product to offset margin compression due to a rival’s CD special. This type of product war is a daily reality, as bankers cite other local institutions as their main competition across most product lines (CSBS, 2025). How can you be sure your new product will bridge the gap and not just be a costly reaction?

The short answer: consult your planning model by performing rigorous "what-if" tests to measure the financial impact of business decisions before adoption. This exercise should include outside-business-as-usual simulations that model best and worst-case scenarios.

To “what-if” or “scenario” test ideas, a predictive planning model is essential. A modern financial model meets regulatory expectations, enhances informed decision-making, and integrates budgeting, forecasting, and ALM/IRR to minimize manual errors from duplicated assumptions.

Your software must be able to simulate the complexities of your leadership team’s aspirations, without being overwhelming to operate. Aim to get so comfortable with your model that you're never afraid to push it to its limits!

Prioritize Agility: Eliminate the Capacity Deficit

The biggest adversary to executing your 2026 goals isn't future risk, but today's lack of internal bandwidth driven by non-core, compliance-related, and manually intensive tasks. You cannot effectively pursue new opportunities nor address challenges/risks if your organization is paralyzed by a capacity deficit. Capacity Deficit is the gap between internal resources (time, talent, and energy) required for mandatory duties and those needed for strategic, value-generating work.

The banking industry faces monumental adversity, forcing institutions to confront an ever-evolving array of economic, institution-specific, and internal risk factors such as political shifts, competition, and staff turnover. This nonstop internal "noise" consumes the time and energy ideally spent on growth initiatives.

The Hidden Cost of Inaction

To prioritize agility, you must seek to eliminate administrative and compliance overhead that fuels the Capacity Deficit.

Much of the money you spend on compliance is likely not going to advanced tools or specialized services, it’s going toward internal employee time spent on mandatory duties. You’re essentially paying top talent to handle administrative overhead.

To successfully navigate 2026, you must stop treating bandwidth as a limitless resource and start viewing it as a scarce strategic asset.

• Concentrate on Core Strengths: Focus exclusively on the duties that demand your unique expertise. For example, maximizing Net Interest Margin (NIM) continues to be a significant hot button for community bankers. In fact, the 2025 CSBS Annual Survey cited it as the most important external risk facing community banks. NIM must be monitored and addressed internally.
  
  
• Outsource for Efficiency: Delegate or outsource functions that have become burdensome and don’t strictly have to be handled internally. Enlisting the expertise of a third party is often the most cost-effective solution, particularly for specialized knowledge areas, such as an asset liability management program. It can even help ease the hiring issues many organizations are experiencing. In fact, roughly 1 in 4 banks reported difficulties in attracting compliance and tech talent, forcing internal staff to shoulder non-core, specialized responsibilities (BNY Mellon, 2025).

This focused approach ensures optimal resource stewardship and maintains robust regulatory compliance.

How Plansmith Can Help

We understand that building the foundation for future planning is impossible when you're drowning today.

Plansmith, including our advisory services team led by former FDIC and NCUA examiners, is here to help you seamlessly wrap up 2025 and prepare for a strong new year. We encourage you to evaluate your budgeting, forecasting, and ALM processes now. Which of these are overly tedious? Consider which aspects would be valuable to outsource. At a minimum, to ensure you meet regulatory expectations, we recommend investing in annual backtesting and sensitivity testing.

Plansmith not only has a strong model but acts as your comprehensive planning partner. Our goal is to remove pressure from your daily operations so you can focus on what truly matters to you.

Click here to schedule a discussion of your unique needs today.