At an age when most people are thinking about retirement, Larry Reding is starting the next phase of his career – helping Bank of the West open a combined agribusiness banking office in Des Moines and St. Louis. The 65-year-old already has more than a decade of experience as an agribusiness consultant through his firm, ISAG LLC, and over 30 years has developed agribusiness finance divisions for several other banks, including Farm Credit Services in Omaha, Norwest Bank (now Wells Fargo & Co.), and Sac City State Bank. He even started his career as a vocational agriculture teacher. This long career has allowed him to focus on his passion for farming, which goes back to growing up in rural Iowa.

How did you become involved with Bank of the West?

I had become familiar with Bank of the West after they had purchased Commercial Federal Bank (and First Community Bank). I know their history in agriculture and the fact that they have been a key agricultural banking company for a long time and saw them as something that was really filling a need in the marketplace. They approached me with the idea of me helping them become more established here in the Midwest. They saw my expertise and experience as something they valued and I saw this as an opportunity to do something different.

What kind of work did you do through your consulting company?

I worked with mid-sized agribusiness companies here in Iowa, some in Illinois and Texas and other Midwestern states. I’ve been involved in a number of management transition projects, merger and acquisition work and helping companies develop their capital structure so that they can grow.

How did you become interested in agribusiness?

My parents moved from Nebraska to Iowa with two young children and a few belongings and established their farming career in Iowa, so I grew up in that environment.

How has this industry changed since you’ve been in it?

To deliver low-cost, high-quality, safe, delicious food to the consumer means that we have food production systems that incorporate the safety values that we demand. And we need to do it fast and efficiently. That doesn’t marry up with what I grew up with in a typical family farm environment. Whether we want to preserve that or not, it has evolved and we need to embrace that right away so that [food production] is safe and balanced with the environment.

My role here is to help hire and train people to establish a core group that brings Bank of the West’s services and debt capital to the marketplace in a way that is going to best serve our customers and ultimately the consumer. We understand agriculture; therefore we can better deliver financial services that are going to support agriculture.

What opportunities do you see for Bank of the West in Iowa?

Agricultural banking was more individual, and many of those institutions can’t deliver the right kinds of services or the capital that companies need today. Bank of the West, being a significant bank from a size standpoint and having a strong history of agriculture growth, its makeup is a perfect fit for Iowa and the Midwest.

What do you enjoy most about this new position?

One thrill for me is to meet with existing customers and help them solve problems and draw upon my experience having worked with similar types of businesses and transfer my knowledge and experience to those customers. Thus we enrich the relationship with Bank of the West. But critical in this, the company must have an understanding and commitment to agriculture and truly Bank of the West does. Since its core beginnings back in 1986, agriculture as a part of Bank of the West’s portfolio has continued to grow every year, and you have a lot of things that have happened historically that have been challenging to agriculture and not all banking companies can show this kind [growth]. … Today they’re showing about 40 percent growth over last year. That’s why I’m here.

Where would people find you on the weekends?

I have six grandchildren. We like to go out to eat. We enjoy going to the zoo, the historical museum, fishing, biking, playing ball. They’re active kids. We have a lot of fun. I also am active in our church; I teach an adult Bible class.