Pub. 12 2017-2018 Issue 5

NEBRASKA BANKERS ASSOCIATION 7 President’s Message — continued on page 11 Richard J. Baier, President & CEO, Nebraska Bankers Association PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE PREFERRED VENDORS ADDRESS NBA-MEMBER PAIN POINTS Y OUR NBA MARKETING AND OUTREACH TEAM SPENT A SIZABLE amount of time over the past year talking with member banks about specific pain points and frustrations within their respective organizations. We received a great deal of input, as youmight imagine, about regulation, compliance, in- formation technology, andworkforce. A few commonly identified themes and issues during these discussions included managing the cost of employee benefits, providing a secure information technology infrastructure, improving employee performance review processes, filling technical voids left by pending staff retirements, and cybersecurity. With this input in hand, your NBA staff has been revisiting the list of products and services available through both the NBA and our for-profit subsidiary, the Nebraska Bankers Insurance & Services Company (NBISCO). Employee Benefits The NBA’s Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association (VEBA) has offered a suite of employee insurance products to our member institutions since 1974. Currently, more than 4,500 Nebraska bankers are enrolled in VEBA’s self-insured health plan, representing more than 10,800 covered lives. For 2018, the VEBA Board of Trustees approved health insurance rates that included no increase. VEBA’s history reflects an average 5.6 percent annual increase over the past 10 years. Participation in the VEBA dental and vision insurance programs has continued to see strong growth, withmore than 3,300 bankers using VEBA dental coverage and 2,600 NBA-member employees taking ad- vantage of vision insurance coverage. Both the dental and vision