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EMPYREAN SOLUTIONS – THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SERIES

Transforming Treasury

An eight-volume series on interest rate risk, model governance, and the future of balance sheet management in U.S. banking.

Brian Gilbert — Chief Banking Officer, Empyrean Solutions

Fireside chat — July 28, 2026 • Volumes 1 & 2 publish July 28, 2026

70%

of consolidated U.S. bank revenue is net interest income — and the risk that drives it is still measured with tools built for a calmer era.

2 of 3

major U.S. banking crises since 1980 were, at their origin, interest rate risk failures — the S&L crisis and the 2022–2023 regional bank failures.

9,000

banks and credit unions need this expertise. The talent gap to staff it institution-by-institution cannot be closed by hiring alone.
Stream available

The fireside chat

Ahead of publication, Brian Gilbert sits down with Laurent Birade to introduce the Five Pillars framework and preview what the series argues. Stream now to see the full conversation.

Launch Event

Transforming Treasury

A conversation on why interest rate risk has driven two of the last three major U.S. banking crises, what the Five Pillars framework prescribes, and what the series covers over the months that follow.

Brian Gilbert
Chief Banking Officer, Empyrean Solutions
 
Laurent Birade
Principal, Strategic Balance Sheet Management, Empyrean Solutions
Stream the webinar
The Framework

The Five Pillars of a Shareholder Approach

Not a way to satisfy an examiner — a way to genuinely understand and manage the balance sheet. Each pillar depends on the one before it, except the fifth, which spans all four.

1. Data Integrity

Accurate contractual cash flows for every instrument, before any behavioral assumption is layered on top.

2. Behavioral Modeling

Capturing the non-linear relationship between rate movements and deposit migration — not a static decay rate.

3. Stochastic Modeling

Hundreds of rate paths, not parallel shocks — making the tail of the distribution visible before it arrives.

4. Programmatic Hedging

Caps and floors purchased systematically to cover both legs of the balance sheet’s short strangle.

5. Funds Transfer Pricing

Pricing the risk of every transaction back to the business unit that created it, at the moment it’s created.

The Full Corpus

The release ledger

Eleven documents, released across roughly five months. Each builds on the credibility of the one before it. Register once and every volume lands in your inbox the day it publishes.

Launch — July 28, 2026  •  CEFPRO Conference — October 27, 2026  •  Final essay — December 2026

Ref

Title

Date

Status

Easy Setup
Webinar

The Fireside Chat: Introducing the Five Pillars
Brian Gilbert & Laurent Birade

Jul 28, 2026

Watch Now
Vol. 1

The Crisis Nobody Saw Coming—Again
Setting the stakes: IRR as systemic risk

Jul 28, 2026

Download
Vol. 2

The Flawed Foundation
Why NII-at-Risk and EVE are failing banks

Jul 28, 2026

Download
Vol. 3

The Short Strangle No One Hedges
A framework for convexity risk management

Aug 11, 2026

Download
Vol. 4

The Shareholder Standard and the Five Pillars
Pillars 1–3: seeing the balance sheet correctly

Aug 25, 2026

Download
Vol. 5

The Programmatic Hedge
Building the hedge; a practitioner’s account

Sep 10, 2026

Download
Vol. 6

FTP as Risk Management, Not Incentive Architecture
Pillar 5: completing the framework

Sep 23, 2026

Download
Vol. 7

Model Risk in the Rate Cycle
SR 26-2, behavioral models, and the AI governance gap

Oct 7, 2026

Download
Vol. 8

The Treasury Department of 2030
A shareholder approach at every institution

Oct 21, 2026

Scheduled

Companion

Testing the Programmatic Hedge
Technical Companion — the quantitative break-even case

Nov 3, 2026

Scheduled

Companion

Testing the Programmatic Hedge
Technical Companion — the quantitative break-even case

Nov 3, 2026

Scheduled

Essay

Fragile by Design
A practitioner application of Taleb’s Incerto

Nov 24, 2026

Scheduled

Essay

Beyond the Five Pillars
Gaps, systemic risk, and the policy frontier

Dec 15, 2026

Scheduled

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The practitioner framework, analytical judgments, and conclusions in this series are those of Brian Gilbert, Chief Banking Officer, Empyrean Solutions. Conceptual review provided by Laurent Birade, Principal, Strategic Balance Sheet Management. Developed with the assistance of AI research and drafting tools, with all analytical judgments and conclusions reviewed and directed by the named author.