CoBank named current Chief Credit Officer Bill Davis executive vice president for Farm Credit Banking as part of a broader reorganization of the bank’s customer-facing business lines.
Davis will be responsible for the bank’s newly created Farm Credit Banking Group, with responsibility for wholesale funding relationships with the bank’s 22 affiliated Farm Credit associations and other Farm Credit institutions. The group will also eventually assume responsibility for a number of banking services and products offered to and in partnership with Farm Credit associations.
The bank also appointed Mike Short, senior vice president of Credit Approval, to succeed Davis as chief credit officer on an interim basis until a permanent successor is named. Short will manage CoBank’s entire Credit Group and report directly to Tim Curran, chief risk officer.
“I believe that our Farm Credit-facing business activities have become sufficiently large and complex that it now makes sense to have a stand-alone banking group with a singular focus on the needs of our partners and their customers,” said Tom Halverson, CoBank’s president and CEO. “This organizational step will help us to assess and evolve our Farm Credit System business model. I am grateful that Bill Davis has agreed to take on this critical new role given his enormous depth of experience in the Farm Credit System.”
Davis previously served as chief credit officer for Farm Credit Services of America, the largest association in the Farm Credit System, and for Frontier Farm Credit. Earlier, Davis was FCSAmerica’s senior vice president of Credit and before that director of Credit Underwriting. Prior to joining FCSAmerica, he held senior credit positions with Farm Credit Services of Western Missouri and the Farm Credit Bank of St. Louis. He began his career as an assistant vice president and branch manager with the Federal Land Bank Association in Missouri.
Short joined CoBank in 2013 and previously served as Capital Markets sector manager and as senior vice president – Special Assets. Prior to CoBank, he spent 11 years with John Hancock Financial Services in Boston and 13 years with Bank of America and predecessor companies in North Carolina and Florida.
