Avsnitt
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With commodity prices falling and producer expenses rising, it’s a difficult moment for America’s agricultural economy. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Agri-Access — Dakota Mac loan production officer Caleb Hopkins discusses strategies ag lenders are using to support their clients through this cycle. As chair of ABA’s Agricultural and Rural Bankers Committee, Hopkins also provides a preview of the upcoming ABA Agricultural Bankers Conference.
This episode is presented by Agri-Access.
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John Asbury didn’t need a new job in 2016, but when he saw an opportunity build something lost in the 1990s — what he calls “the great Virginia regional bank” — he took it. Eight years later, Richmond-based Atlantic Union Bank has more than tripled in size and is on track to reach nearly $40 billion in assets after completion of an announced acquisition of Sandy Spring Bank. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — AUB CEO Asbury talks about the transformation of the bank. He also discusses his agenda as the newly elected chair of the American Bankers Association, including advocating to remove arbitrary asset thresholds that distort banks’ strategic growth plans, his approach to leadership development at the bank and his commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Crypto investment scams cost Americans billions of dollars. The scammers start small with confidence or romance scams and gradually work their way up to demanding ever larger “investments.” On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — officials from the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission break down how these scams work, typologies and red flags bankers should look out for and how banks can build proactive partnerships with law enforcement. They also discuss a new educational infographic on these scams produced jointly by the ABA Foundation and several government agencies.
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How do community banks balance the need for cutting-edge technology and the human touch? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Pamela Montpelier of Ballston Spa National Bank talks about how a laser-like focus on customer experience can help drive growth. Among other topics, Montpelier discusses the use of AI-based tools to improve decision-making and help bank employees replace manual processes with time spent engaging clients. She also talks about her experience working with a variety of banks as a service provider executive, prior to which she was the youngest female bank CEO in Massachusetts.
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As president and CEO of $50 billion-plus BOK Financial, Stacy Kymes spends time thinking about the role of regional banks in the U.S. economy. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Kymes talks about how BOK Financial finds unique niches and meets the credit and capital market needs in its core mid-America markets. Among other topics, Kymes discusses:
BOK Financial’s diversified business model that balances lending with fee businesses like an EFT network and treasury and wealth management. The role of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based BOK Financial in financing the energy economy. BOK Financial’s tribal banking programs in Oklahoma and New Mexico, including a unique mortgage loan product for tribal lands. The bank’s plans to grow share in core markets of Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston. BOK’s approach to talent management, recruitment and acquisition. The importance of having banks headquartered in “flyover states” that can meet the capital markets needs of large and middle-market firms. -
Miami is often described as the northernmost city in Latin America, or sometimes as Latin America’s business capital. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Banesco USA President and CEO Cali Garcia-Velez discusses how he and his team are growing a Latin American banking franchise in South Florida and Puerto Rico. Among other topics, Garcia-Velez discusses:
The origins of Banesco USA, which is an independent U.S.-chartered bank that is part of a franchise of other Banesco banks across the Americas. Banesco USA’s growth plans in the turbocharged South Florida market, including its pivot into C&I lending and residential mortgages to balance its commercial real estate portfolio. How Banesco USA’s loan growth was fueled by a capital award from the Treasury Department’s Emergency Capital Investment Program for minority depository institutions. His own journey as a banker, which included turnaround assignments at troubled banks in Puerto Rico. -
Most bankers dread the thought of a core conversion, but once that decision is made, the process can open up new opportunities for strategic growth. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Webster Five CIO Kate Megraw discusses her bank’s conversion and what she learned. Among other topics, Megraw explains:
How a new core met the business strategy needs of Massachusetts-based Webster Five. The process of developing an RFP, exploring models and working with a core selection consultant. The role of commercial client growth in driving the need for a new core platform. Challenges and successes experienced in the conversion process.Megraw will join fellow Core Platforms Committee members to discuss conversions at the ABA Annual Convention, Oct. 27-29 in New York City.
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As chief corporate responsibility officer for Webster Bank, Marissa Weidner works across the bank’s footprints and business lines to help advance the bank’s goals of financial empowerment. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Weidner discusses the many dimensions of how this takes shape at the northeastern regional bank. Among other topics, she explores:
Webster’s focus on access to capital for small businesses, including those owned by minorities and women. How Webster designed its special-purpose credit program focused on homeownership. Webster’s innovative “finance labs,” built in partnership with local schools and nonprofit partners, to provide hands-on financial experience for young people from low-to-moderate-income areas. The role of Bank On accounts in Webster’s financial inclusion strategy.Weidner also discusses her career journey — including experience in economic development, bank human resources and bank merger integration — that led her to her current role.
This episode is presented by Alkami.
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Fraud is front and center for America’s banks, and on the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — ABA’s Paul Benda and Peter Cook discuss several recent initiatives taken by ABA to help banks tackle fraud from a variety of fronts.
Benda discusses ABA’s recently expanded Fraud Contact Directory, which is free to all banks and now encompasses other forms of fraud to facilitate prompt claims. He also explores new tools banks are using to tackle rising fraud numbers. Meanwhile, Cook discusses the latest incarnation of ABA’s award-winning #BanksNeverAskThat anti-phishing campaign — returning for a fourth year in October and also free to all banks — and previews a new companion initiative, Practice Safe Checks, that educates consumers about how to avoid becoming unwitting victims of check fraud. -
Earlier this week, VersaBank closed on its purchase of Stearns Bank Holdingford N.A., giving the Canadian point-of-sale lender a point of entry into the U.S. market. On the season eight premiere of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — VersaBank founder and CEO David Taylor discusses the bank’s growth plans in the United States.
Taylor also explores his career history in banking, the story of VersaBank as the first new bank to receive a license in Canada in 18 years, how the bank developed a deposit broker network in Canada, VersaBank’s point-of-sale lending strategy (and how it can acquire loans without any equity from the finance company), and VersaBank’s talent and culture.
This episode is presented by Alkami.
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Consumers everywhere see and hear credit union marketing campaigns, from PenFed’s ubiquitous jingle to big stadium and Super Bowl sponsorship deals. In fact, according to a new ABA DataBank post from ABA’s Dan Brown and Robert Flock, credit unions spend more than double what comparable banks do on marketing as a percentage of net income.
But why do credit unions, which serve members from defined fields of membership, spend so much? On the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Brown and Flock break down the legislative and regulatory history of fields of membership and how the average credit union has more than doubled its “potential membership” since new rules were finalized in 2015, using their taxpayer subsidy to fuel growth via marketing rather than lower rates and costs for their members.
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At the midpoint of the year, what’s the M&A outlook like for community banks? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, ABA Banking Journal Contributing Editor Paul Davis discusses what he’s seeing with mergers and acquisitions and what to expect for the remainder of 2024.
Davis, the founder of the Bank Slate newsletter, also discusses what he’s hearing from banks about succession planning and talent and talks about budget forecasting, an area the Bank Slate is surveying bankers on for 2025.
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On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, ABA economist Jeff Huther discusses recent dynamics with the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, the “world’s most important number.” Huther delves into topics in his his new ABA DataBank essay, exploring how quantitative tightening has pushed SOFR toward the upper end of the Federal Open Market Committee’s rate target range, the effects of monetary policy mechanisms like the Overnight Reverse Repo Facility, and how banks and other SOFR users can manage volatility that may emerge in the rate.
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To mark Independence Day this week, this classic replay episode of the ABA Banking Journal explores the role of banking and finance in the American Revolution and the founding era. John Steele Gordon is an acclaimed economic historian whose books include Hamilton’s Blessing, The Great Game and An Empire of Wealth; he is also the ABA Banking Journal’s “From the Vault” columnist. In this episode, Gordon discusses:
How not having any chartered banks prior to 1782 put the United States at a disadvantage during the Revolution. Conversely, how the Bank of England was a “secret weapon” for Britain during the war. The role of patriotic financiers like Robert Morris in achieving U.S. victory. The debates over a central bank in the post-revolutionary period and how they contributed to the development of the Constitution. -
“We’re seeing banks that have never been scrutinized before for redlining and being told that they have risk that they have not before and risk in ways that they’ve never really viewed it before,” says Andrea Mitchell. “We’re in some new territory, and I think it’s important for CEOs to understand what their compliance officers and legal departments are seeing on the ground.”
In the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Andrea Mitchell, a top fair lending attorney, reviews the latest trends in redlining enforcement. She reviews cases brought by the Justice Department, the importance of screening programs, planning for entering new markets, the role of peer analyses in managing redlining risk and the effects of redlining enforcement on M&A activity.
Mitchell also discusses the intersection of DOJ enforcement and prudential supervision, noting that “if your regulator thinks you’re doing very well, even in in terms of minority market lending, and is relying on your CRA rating, there’s nothing that prevents HUD or DOJ or other agencies from scrutinizing you.”
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Brent Beardall thinks bankers need to be more comfortable with risk. “We’re not out there taking crazy risk, but my point is don’t be afraid to fail,” says the president and CEO of WaFd Bank, based in tech-focused Seattle. “If you’re going to fail: fail quickly, fail small. That’s the two requirements I have, because if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.”
In the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Beardall discusses technology experiments that didn’t work, and those that did. He discusses the bank’s tech lab subsidiary Archway Software and its combined voice- and phone-based authentication for wire transfers.
Beardall discusses WaFd’s commercial real estate portfolio, which he notes is majority “stabilized multifamily, which is the safest asset class that we or any bank can make.” Office buildings — the most distressed CRE asset class — account for just 4% of WaFd’s portfolio, Beardall says, noting that CRE is a big and diverse sector beyond the office headlines.
Finally, Beardall talks about his remarkable personal story of surviving a deadly plane crash in early 2023. “You’re flying on a jet airplane to go to the Rose Bowl, and all of a sudden you go from being pretty good to fighting for your life and you realize just how vulnerable you are and how precious life is because it can change in a heartbeat,” he says. “People that I competed with, bankers that I would compete with, they set it all aside and said, “Let’s focus on helping each other.’ We have a lot more in common than we have in terms of differences, and let’s give equal weight to what we have in common and work together for the collective good.”
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“I need people who understand technology and the business more than I need people who understand compliance,” says Greg Imm, who recently retired as chief compliance officer at M&T Bank. “I can teach them compliance. I cannot teach them technology. We are paying much more attention on what is going on in technology that never existed five, six years ago.”
The latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — features part two of a two-part conversation with Imm and David Kelly, retiring chief risk officer at Denver-based FirstBank. At ABA’s Risk and Compliance Conference in Seattle, Kelly was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for Risk, and Imm was honored with the Distinguished Service Award for Compliance.
In part two, Kelly and Imm discuss the role of technology in the compliance and risk disciplines, how they hire and coach talent, and their involvement with ABA and other professional development providers over their careers.
This episode is presented by Alkami.
Listen to part one of this conversation. -
In a time of heightened regulatory risk and business challenges, “that’s where the risk professionals become very important,” says David Kelly, CERP, who recently retired as chief risk officer at Denver-based FirstBank. “Those relationships across business lines, because the risk will flow across those business lines, and getting stakeholders together to have those conversations.”
The latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — features part one of a two-part conversation with Kelly and Greg Imm, the retired chief compliance officer at M&T Bank and Fifth Third Bank. At ABA’s Risk and Compliance Conference in Seattle, Kelly was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for Risk, and Imm was honored with the Distinguished Service Award for Compliance.
In part one, Kelly and Imm discuss their experience across different institutions — Kelly spent most of his career at FirstBank, while Imm worked at numerous large and regional banks as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. They also discuss the evolving role of technology in risk and compliance professionals and how soft skills contribute to risk and compliance career development.
This episode is presented by Alkami.
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On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Biz2X — Anthony Sharett, president of Pathward N.A., discusses how his FDIC-insured bank works alongside depository institutions to expand offerings that enhance financial inclusion and reach the unbanked. Sharett discusses Pathward’s reloadable co-branded prepaid card business — which can help a bank offer a Bank On-certified account — as well as its gift card business line. Sharett discusses how Pathward uses a design thinking approach to work with its bank clients to “co-create” products. “There are lots of banks out there that are providing valuable services to customers, providing solutions, providing products that they need, but is there a gap?”
He also talks about new areas where Pathward is branching out, including commercial finance solutions like merchant services, and working capital. “As we think about financial inclusion and financial education and bringing people through that journey of creditworthiness, we are excited about the credit builder product for small and midsize businesses, which are really those entrepreneurs that are the backbone of how we just expand commerce in the United States,” he says.
During the conversation, Sharett also talks about his own background in bank leadership as an attorney who rose up the ranks on the risk and compliance side of banking, and he discusses how Pathward, formerly known as Metabank, developed its new brand when it sold its trademarks to newly renamed Meta Platforms.
This episode is presented by Biz2X.
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What’s new with Small Business Administration lending this year, and how can bankers maximize the value of the SBA loan guaranty programs? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Biz2X — Erik Daniels of U.S. Bank, the nation’s fourth-largest SBA originator by number of loans, talks about how U.S. Bank builds SBA into its overall business banking strategy.
Daniels highlights the role of SBA lending in making efficient use of capital, mitigating risk, providing more tailored solutions to businesses and driving Community Reinvestment Act impact. He also talks about the value the bank gets out of making SBA loans as a portfolio lender, “which gives our customers great opportunity with rate structure, modifications, any flexibility down the road. . . . Being a portfolio owner gives us the optionality to help them in any way that we can to make their experience a good one.”
Daniels also discusses anticipated changes to SBA programs in 2024 and 2025, and he shares insights on the small business outlook from U.S. Bank clients and survey research.
This episode is presented by Biz2X.
- Visa fler
