James Reuter and the art of leaving room for an encore

James Reuter gave FirstBank 37 years. Retirement got about seven months. In March 2024, he stepped aside after seven years as chief executive of the Colorado bank where he had built his career. By November, he was running First Interstate in Billings, Montana. A person could be forgiven for wondering whether he had misunderstood the assignment.

His explanation came with a musical reference. “There was still some music left in me.” Reuter had studied classical trumpet before banking became his profession. The metaphor had a little more history behind it than the average executive’s podcast remark. He had left one ensemble in capable hands, then accepted an invitation to lead another.

The interesting question is what he brought back with him. His career joins together several things banking tends to discuss in separate meetings: customer service, payments, technology, staff development and community obligations. His second CEO job has made those connections especially visible. He is asking a regional bank to grow while deliberately making parts of it smaller.

A trumpet, a dairy farm, a different direction

Reuter grew up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm, in a town of about 700 people. He was the first of three brothers to go to college. Where sports supplied an obvious extracurricular path, he chose classical trumpet and imagined a future in music. At Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, finance joined the picture.

“My roots are very much a small town,” he has said. There is something useful about holding that childhood beside his later work in electronic payments. The person helping a bank move money through phones began life in a place where work had an unmistakably physical result.

He has spoken fondly about baling hay: a field full of cut grass in the morning, a cleared field by evening. Office life offers fewer such satisfying endings. A strategy can remain unfinished for years; a technology project can disappear into meetings. His recollection gives his professional patience a concrete reference point. The work takes longer, but he still wants to see the field cleared.

A 2019 leadership podcast adds another wonderfully practical ingredient to his early career choices: he disliked the Midwest’s winters. His first banking job took him to California. Even a long career can begin with a perfectly ordinary objection to the weather.

The headquarters assignment he tried to avoid

He joined FirstBank in March 1987, starting at its Palm Springs location. In August 1988, he transferred to Colorado. Asked what he wanted to do, he supplied a clear preference: “Anything but work at the headquarters.” Headquarters promptly acquired a new employee.

Reuter wanted the lobby, loans and conversations with customers. The bank needed someone to lead its debit and credit card programs. His reluctant transfer put him close to the machinery that would change how customers dealt with their banks. He kept attending loan committee meetings, maintaining a view of lending while developing his experience in payments and technology.

That combination helps explain his later resistance to treating digital banking as a separate universe. He had wanted to work directly with customers. Instead, he learned how to build the services through which customers could reach the bank without entering its lobby. The destination remained familiar, even when the route changed.

He also retained a sense of proportion about digital statistics. Discussing mobile banking in 2019, he joked that people sometimes check an app simply to avoid talking to whoever is sitting beside them. A login is an action. It takes a little more thought to decide what that action means.

Forty-four million reasons to pay attention

By 2018, FirstBank’s mobile app was recording 44 million logins a year, up 22 percent from the previous year. Twenty-eight percent of new accounts originated online. Those figures describe the institution at a particular moment, but they also explain the relevance of Reuter’s operational apprenticeship. The lobby was increasingly something customers carried around.

FirstBank’s private ownership gave that work a particular setting. Reuter described the time executives could spend studying operations and planning their next move when they were less occupied with analyst and investor appearances. Emily Robinson, then chief operating officer, discussed online account opening as a measurable part of the bank’s progress. Technology had become part of its daily operating story.

Payments made the change tangible. In a November 2017 interview, Reuter discussed FirstBank’s adoption of Zelle and his involvement in the Federal Reserve’s faster-payments initiative. Customers were already moving $20 million a month through the service. The banking conversation was moving from promises about digital convenience to money actually changing hands.

His industry responsibilities followed the same interests. In 2020, he was appointed chair of the American Bankers Association’s American Bankers Council for the 2020-21 membership year. He had also chaired its Government Relations Council, Venture Investment Committee and Payments System Advisory Committee. Those assignments connected a regional bank’s operating experience with debates that reached well beyond Colorado.

Leaving while the next team was ready

Reuter became FirstBank’s CEO in 2017. When his retirement was announced in February 2024, he said he had always expected to hold the role for five to seven years before making room for the next generation. Seven years later, he followed his own timetable.

“My proudest accomplishment has been building this team.” The board named president Kevin Classen to succeed him as CEO and chief digital officer Kelly Kaminskas to become chief operating officer, effective March 29. Reuter initially remained on the board. The departure came with named successors, established experience and an actual date. Succession had made it out of the presentation deck.

FirstBank reported $28.2 billion in assets at the end of 2023. His tenure had encompassed substantial growth, but his farewell singled out people. Classen and Kaminskas had each spent years inside the organization. He was leaving colleagues who had already had time to learn the business and influence it.

A June 2024 conversation with banking writer John Maxfield returned to leadership, younger talent and continuous learning. Its timing is revealing: between CEO jobs, Reuter was still discussing how banks develop people. The subject had survived his departure from the office.

“My proudest accomplishment has been building this team.”

Jim Reuter · announcing his FirstBank retirement, 2024

A new bank, with a different set of questions

First Interstate announced his appointment on October 9, 2024, with the job beginning November 1. He succeeded Kevin Riley as president and CEO and joined the board. Chairman Stephen Bowman pointed to his community banking experience, knowledge of the bank’s markets and understanding of risk and regulation.

The move also changed his institutional setting. He had spent his working life at a privately held Colorado bank. First Interstate BancSystem traded on Nasdaq. His employment filing described decades of increasing responsibility at FirstBank, including a long period as president and chief operating officer before becoming CEO. He arrived with considerable experience, though without decades of shared history with his new colleagues.

In his 2026 account of the transition, Reuter described having to get out, listen and build connections. First Interstate’s acquisition history had brought together people with different professional backgrounds. He saw value in that variety. He also wanted a flatter organization, bringing decision-making authority closer to the people who understood a client’s circumstances.

He illustrated his idea of service with a small transaction: an employee closing a Jeep loan bought a rubber duck for the customer, recognizing the duck-sharing custom among Jeep owners. A banker had noticed something personal and acted on it. Reuter expected the customer to remember.

Growing by drawing a smaller map

His first annual shareholder letter described a deliberate refocusing. During 2025, First Interstate sold its Arizona and Kansas branches, moved out of indirect lending and certain large transactional loans, and outsourced its consumer credit card business. It also invested in relationship managers and began building a commercial banking team in Colorado.

The bank opened a branch in Columbia Falls, Montana, in 2025 and another in Billings in early 2026. Expansion and retreat were happening together. Reuter’s stated aim was a more coherent footprint and more business from ongoing customer relationships. For a bank assembled partly through acquisitions, the challenge was to make the existing organization work differently.

By October 2026, the bank had completed the sale of eleven Nebraska branches and reported a network of 270 banking offices. Third-quarter net income was $62.2 million. Reported net interest margin reached 3.53 percent, while loans held for investment declined by $296 million from the previous quarter. The numbers show progress and continuing pressure in the same frame.

The institution’s priorities remained relationship banking, customer acquisition and a more productive branch network. A smaller balance sheet makes a tidy headline; whether the reshaped bank wins lasting customer relationships is the longer test.

The other ledger

Reuter’s community commitments have their own operating history. Testifying before a House subcommittee in February 2023, he described FirstBank officers serving on nonprofit boards and a multicultural banking center supporting more than 30 languages and cultures. He also discussed Colorado Gives Day, which raised more than $53 million for over 3,000 nonprofits in 2022. These were institutional efforts, carried by many people.

At First Interstate, he chairs the foundation’s board. In November 2025, the bank and foundation marked $100 million in giving since the foundation’s establishment in 1990. “Without strong communities, you can’t have a strong bank,” he said. The milestone belonged to 35 years of work, most of it preceding his arrival.

The bank’s subsequent responsibility report recorded more than $7.2 million in company donations and foundation grants during 2025, alongside over 60,500 volunteer hours. Reuter had joined an organization with an existing civic life. His responsibility included carrying it forward while changing the business around it.

That is where his second act becomes interesting. He has already demonstrated that he can leave a CEO’s office when colleagues are ready. Now he is making choices about where another bank should stay, where it should invest and where it should withdraw. The former trumpet student has returned to an ensemble with its own history. There is still music to play, and other people have parts to learn.