2025 Deloitte CFO of the Year: Kip Albertson

The long-time Bankers Trust CFO reflects ahead of retirement

/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BR_web_311x311.jpeg

When Kip Albertson looks back on his 31 years as Bankers Trust’s chief financial officer, he has no regrets.

“I mean, maybe I would’ve done this, maybe I would’ve done that, but I can’t go back and do that,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself. But I don’t want to change anything, because if I changed anything, I wouldn’t feel as fortunate as I do today. … If you take a different turn, make a different decision, things can completely change. We are so lucky in every way shape and form. I’m a lucky guy.”

Albertson is the Business Record’s 2025 Deloitte CFO of the Year, which honors an individual for outstanding performance in their role as corporate financial steward. 

Albertson joined Bankers Trust as chief financial officer in 1993 and in March will retire from the bank. During his tenure, the bank’s assets have grown from $460 million to $7 billion, and net income has grown from $4 million to $62.6 million, according to his nomination.

“While Kip’s influence over the financial success of the bank has been significant throughout his full tenure, its growth over the past decade especially stands out. … From 2009 to 2014, assets increased 32% and earnings more than doubled,” Bankers Trust President and CEO Don Coffin wrote in his nomination of Albertson.

Albertson’s leadership led to 11 consecutive years of record financial growth for the bank, which put it in a strong position to weather the pandemic in 2020, Coffin wrote..

Over the course of his time with Bankers Trust, Albertson also held other senior roles in addition to CFO, including chief administrative officer. He also led the creation of BTC Capital Management, Bankers Trust’s registered investment advisory firm, in 2009.

In the community, Albertson serves on the boards of the Iowa PBS Foundation and WesleyLife. Other previous community involvement includes volunteering with United Way of Central Iowa’s annual campaigns and serving on the boards of ChildServe, the Greater Des Moines Partnership and the Roosevelt High School Foundation.

Albertson sat down with the Business Record to reflect on his career. 

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity

I was reading about Bankers Trust’s record performance and how it has grown steadily. I’d like to hear about your role in that and how you’ve shepherded that growth. 

Well, all I am is part of a team. We’re very fortunate to be owned by the Ruan family. Mr. Ruan — we affectionately call him Mr. Ruan —  purchased the bank in the early ’60s. I’ve had the opportunity to serve in the CFO role since 1993, so a little more than half the time the Ruans have owned the bank. We, myself, the employees of the bank, the customers of the bank, and the community are very indebted to the Ruans for everything that they have done philanthropically for the bank, to allow the bank to continue to grow. I think between the employees we have and their passion for taking care of the customers, our ability to attract and retain customers, and our customer success has led to the growth of the bank. We have many customers who have been with the bank for decades, which sounds unusual. We have some who have been with us for over 50 years. The growth of those customers and their success has led to the growth and success of the bank. So I’m just a piece of this puzzle and I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by great owners, great employees, great customers. And the communities that we serve are fantastic, as we all know from Des Moines, but we’re in Cedar Rapids, Sioux Falls, S.D., Phoenix, Omaha, Neb and Ames. I’m just lucky to be a part of a team that has passion for what they’re doing.

How do you attract those customers? What’s the secret sauce for that?

I think it all goes down to the bank wants to continue to invest in our community. We hire people who are very passionate about customer service. If you’re a private-banking customer, when you make a phone call to your banker, you’re going to call their cellphone. You’re not going to call a number, have to go through a bunch of transfers to talk to your banker. I think we’re very unusual in that. Don Coffin, our CEO, if a customer wants his cellphone, he’ll give his cellphone, same with me. We need to be here to serve the customers. We do that with a lot of pride. It makes us feel good to do that. And if we’re a little part of our customers’ success, we feel good about that as well.

How would you describe your leadership style?

Our folks are so good at what they do; we let our people do their job. And my role simply is to make sure we’re all aligned on what our objectives are, where the bank is and where it’s going, how we’re going to get there, how we’re going to monitor the risk factors of the organization. Even in the last 20 years, we’ve had 9/11, we’ve had the financial crisis, we’ve had COVID, we’ve had all kinds of things happen. Those kinds of things will happen again, and if we have the bank aligned properly from risk management with loans, the technology side of things, make sure everything is safe and sound as it can be with the industry and the asset liability management that we have, make sure the balance sheet is properly set up for the bank, we’ll have a lot of success. And when existential events occur, we just have to react to them and move forward.

Bankers Trust has donated $10 million over the past 10 years to nonprofits. Why do you think it’s important for the bank to be involved in the communities it serves?

I think the Ruans have been a very philanthropic family over many years. The bank is following in that same vein. The bank wants to support the community and the employees want to support the community. We have a very successful United Way program. But as important as the dollars are, our employees contribute around 13,000 hours a year of their time to the community, to nonprofit organizations. That I think we’re equally as proud of. A tremendous number of employees are in leadership positions with organizations throughout our community that are really making a difference in trying to make them grow.

You’ve served on a lot of boards — WesleyLife, ChildServe — those are just a couple. I’m curious to hear how you make sure an organization is rising to the level to meet its mission.

When I became chairman of the ChildServe board in 2014, they had a governance board and a foundation. There wasn’t much happening in the foundation. After I’d been on it for five years or so, I realized that I knew the mission of ChildServe pretty intimately: to serve our most vulnerable young people in our community. The gentleman who was running the organization and Teri Wahlig, who runs it today, we had a conversation with a couple of other board members. We were convinced this foundation could become something more than what it is, so we set out on a mission. It took two to three years, and we spoke with business leaders; we were able to get a handful of the leading business people in Des Moines to really see what this ChildServe organization is all about. When I first started serving on the board, ChildServe was not one of the 25 most recognized nonprofits in the city of Des Moines. We said this should change because of what ChildServe does. Long story short, we got these handful of business leaders to understand what needed to be done, and within three years, we had a $10 million capital campaign and it became something truly of substance that was consequential to serving the most vulnerable young population in our community.

What are the big challenges you see facing the bank now and in the future?

The Federal Reserve has its challenges. In 2008, they didn’t see the financial crisis coming. Before interest rates started to rise they thought inflation was transitory — even the experts with hundreds of economists advising them. Things happen and sometimes they can happen very quickly. Are we worried about anything in particular at the bank? We make sure the bank is fundamentally where it should be. The asset quality is appropriate, risk management is appropriate, the balance sheet structure can withstand whatever happens with interest rates and that’s where we are today.

You’re retiring in March. What would you like your legacy to be? What would you like to see continue at the bank after you leave?

We’re very close to hiring someone for the CFO role. I’m confident we’re going to hire an individual who will do a fantastic job for the bank, who will take the bank to the next steps in where it needs to go. One thing I’m very proud of, I told Don Coffin for a long time that I think the CFO role at Bankers Trust is the best CFO role in the state of Iowa. The individual we’re recruiting, I talked to him two months ago and I mentioned this to him and he said, “You told me that three years ago.” The reason it is so good is everything I’ve mentioned: ownership, employees, customers, community that we have. The individual coming in has a real opportunity to work with fantastic people who are really good at what they do. I don’t know that I have a concept of a legacy. It’s time for someone to leave and it’s time for someone to come in, and I think the time is right. I think everything is in fantastic shape and I think the team is going to take the bank to the next level successfully. 

What are you going to do in your retirement?

In the summertime, I ride my bike a lot. I ski or golf or travel. We have a property in Winterset my wife and I work at. My wife, Debbie, we’ve been together over 50 years. And she’s the best. She’s a retired teacher from Johnston. She taught for over 25 years. I told many people I wish I was as good at my job as she was at her job. She was exceptional.

What made her exceptional?

She worked every night. She would make phone calls when a phone call needed to be made, and she would tell parents sometimes what they didn’t want to hear about what they needed to do. She didn’t pull any punches. She told people what they needed to hear and she had a big impact on a lot of kids’ lives.

Who have your role models been over your career?

My wife, I’ve mentioned that. My parents were fantastic people. They served in World War II. They’ve got a couple great kids. The people that I’ve worked with at the bank, because I‘ve worked here for so long and seen the success and the passion that people really put forth in what they do. Don’s an exceptional leader. He lets people do their job, quite frankly. When you get the right people in a situation, letting them do their job is one of the greatest leadership traits someone can have. Renee Hardman is someone I admire a lot. I’ve known Renee for almost 30 years. I worked with her for 20 years. There’s a lot of other people in our community who have given more economically than Renee, but no one has given their heart and soul to the community like Renee Hardman has. And I’ve always looked up to her for all that she has done and all that she has given to the community.

From your standpoint as a CFO and someone who has been involved in the community, how do you think Des Moines could be better?

Des Moines has been so successful. I’ve lived in this community for 69 years, and I have seen the physical transformation of Des Moines, at all points of the compass in various communities. I can only hope Des Moines continues to do what it has done. We have great leaders in Des Moines. Now, that can be business leaders, and it could be leaders of the nonprofits that serve the populace and the most vulnerable of the population, but I hope that Des Moines continues to do what it’s been doing. I think the young people in Des Moines are exceptional and are doing a great job. I think Des Moines has a fantastic future. A lot of people leave the community when they retire. My wife and I couldn’t envision leaving Des Moines.

/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BR_web_311x311.jpeg

Lisa Rossi

freelance contributing writer for the Business Record

Email the writer