Password management critical to protecting data
Many companies these days use online services, rather than internally hosted applications, making password management and second-factor authentication key. [Continue]
Chicken Little and the economy
Just like Chicken Little, the bond market was recently hit on the head with an acorn, and the yield curve screamed “recession.” The yield curve temporarily inverted, and the three-month Treasury yield was higher than the 10-year yield. This created a bit of hysteria, because an inverted yield curve has predicted the last seven recessions since 1970 with only one head fake. [Continue]
Getting to win-win through negotiation
Excellent leaders possess strong negotiation skills. Yet the art of negotiating successfully is rare these days. As many organizations transition to their next generation of leaders, soft skills training, which includes negotiation skills, seem to be forgotten. I consider negotiation skills to be a key trait for up-and-coming leaders to succeed in the marketplace. [Continue]
Credit for cash flow
It’s a big deal when any small business lands a big customer. Business owners dream of landing a Fortune 500 customer that will assure sales and boost profits. But of course, that’s not the end of the challenge. No small business owner wants to become dependent upon one big customer, so the ultimate goal is to land several big customers. [Continue]
Entrepreneurship starts with you
An entrepreneur is someone who surveys the landscape, looks for things that could be improved, and acts toward that improvement. Entrepreneurship, at its essence, is problem-solving. Sometimes an entrepreneur will start a company to solve that problem, and if the company is successful, that entrepreneur becomes famous. [Continue]
‘They’ may be lurking at your institution
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. “Why won’t they just finish the project?” I am sure “they,” those awful nameless faceless creatures, are lurking at your institution as well. How do we flush them out? How did they infiltrate our institution in the first place? [Continue]
Tech to fold social lending circles into banking
Invest Sou Sou is a company leveraging tech to create and maintain “lending circles.” This is something of a new twist on an old concept of community-based lending. BankBeat spoke with the company’s co-founder and CEO, Fonta Gilliam, about her career and what lending circles can accomplish. [Continue]
Lending and planting both require faith
There’s a proverb that goes: A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. I connect this idea to community banking, where each day, bankers make investments in the form of loans, which is really about planting the seeds (and seedlings) for economic growth. [Continue]
Bank Secrecy Act overhaul works its way through Congress
In May, the House Financial Services Committee approved the COUNTER Act to modernize and reform the Bank Secrecy Act. The bipartisan bill (H.R. 2514) sets out to curb money laundering and illicit financial activities. It awaits a vote on the House floor. [Continue]
Simple securities should be a portfolio staple
Dan Brown, author of the bestseller “The DaVinci Code,” states that “History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated and the winner writes the history books — books that glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’” [Continue]