Neocova is a St. Louis-based fintech startup that has dropped in to the core provider market for community banks. BankBeat spoke with its founder and CEO, Sultan Meghji, about how a bank’s core can be improved. [Continue]
If there is one thing that frustrates bankers the most, it’s core issues, said Trey Maust, Lewis & Clark Bank, Oregon City, Ore. Maust is former chair of the American Bankers Association’s Community Bankers Council, where he and fellow bankers helped establish a Core Platform Committee. [Continue]
Gather a group of community bankers and you’ll quickly find their common ground: A bad experience with a core processor. Their complaints might focus on lack of responsiveness, steep conversion or deconversion fees, or brutal terms to terminate a contract early; whatever the problem, the result is frustration. [Continue]
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has long been invested in collecting banking data. It started in 1961, when the director of research distributed three charts. The positive feedback the Fed received spurred an initiative to collect and share research outside of the Federal Reserve system. BankBeat recently became part of the tradition. [Continue]
Mercantile Bank of Michigan, Grand Rapids, has its eyes on long term profitability, which has not diminished short term gains. [Continue]
One of the newest trends in banking litigation is the proliferation of “blind eye” fraud claims. The law underlying these claims isn’t new, but the rebrand to “blind eye” is sparking renewed interest and enthusiasm among plaintiffs’ attorneys, foreshadowing litigation to come. [Continue]
After two acquisitions, First Midwest Bank, Chicago, closed the third quarter having generated a company record net income of $54.5 million. [Continue]
As part of Linda Koch’s job as president and chief executive officer of the Illinois Bankers Association, she’s driven the wrong way down a couple too many one-way streets. While traversing rural southern Illinois on her way to visit member banks, she has screamed in fear of crashing into rogue cows as IBA’s members relations manager sat laughing behind the wheel. [Continue]
One of the important roles that community banks play in the American economy is providing credit to small businesses. What I consider to be the typical small company — $1 million to $10 million in annual revenue, 10 to 75 employees — often needs a line of credit or periodic term loans that are too small to attract the interest of the largest banks. [Continue]
With export markets in flux and farm commodity prices slumping, some ag producers are eager to jump into the newest opportunity: Industrial hemp. Bankers who have a solid understanding of compliance risk are approaching the financing of hemp production cautiously. But what hemp introduces in addition to regulatory challenges is credit risk. [Continue]