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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
There has been a hole in the American financial regulatory system with its light- to no-touch regulatory environment for large nonbank financial institutions. A March proposal by a panel of regulators that nonbanks should be regulated only by their activities in business sectors could make that hole yet bigger. [Continue]
“One of the most important features is people who flex to their team,” says Jessica Nollett, discussing effective leadership. Nollett, vice president, business banking team lead at the Overland Park, Kan., office of Clayton, Mo.-headquartered Enterprise Bank & Trust, feels strongly that leadership is about authenticity, pragmatism and helping team members discover their individual strengths, which will enhance the group as a whole. [Continue]
It used to be that the banking regulatory community gave you a pass on having a formalized and documented ERM program within your organization, but the tide, as they say, has turned. [Continue]
Chris Rentner, director of digital lending for Velocity Solutions, LLC and founder and former CEO of Akouba, remembers a time when digital lending for banks seemed like a pipe dream. “If I look back at 2015 when the company [Akouba] wasn’t really even being promoted, everyone was telling us that we were crazy,” he said. “Digital lending at banks? No, OnDeck and Kabbage are going to do that.” [Continue]
People have long talked about the demise of banking. And in the last decade, talk has ramped up on the decline of print media. Of course these industries are changing, and it is likely these industries will move to a fewer number of larger players. But these industries are not going away. In the right niches, banks and newspapers remain important providers of essential services. [Continue]