Ransomware and cyber fraud have been around for decades, but there has arguably never been a more vulnerable time for banks and their customers than now. The threat has proliferated and increased as access to malicious software has grown and bad actors have refined their sophistication in how they deploy it. The pandemic-induced shift to remote working and electronic communication and commerce compounds the risk. [Continue]
What can you do to prevent a ransomware attack? And what should you do if the attackers get in? At United Bankers’ Bank, Bloomington, Minn., employees use a biometric authenticator — a fingerprint reader, in this case — to log in. “It’s required whether I’m sitting here at my desk at home or whether I’m logging into the same network from my desk in the office,” said Barb Fugate. “We can’t be in too much of a hurry to accommodate remote work that we cut those corners. And I think for the most part banks have not.” [Continue]
Despite having been given the green light to open their doors months ago, retailers are finding customers are slow to return. The impacts have been wildly uneven, however. While home improvement and garden supplies stores have thrived, others are clawing their way back to their pre-pandemic levels. [Continue]
When it comes to banks’ commercial real estate lending portfolios, hospitality properties are among those likely to suffer most during the pandemic, while segments of multi-family housing face a very uneven path ahead. [Continue]
When the coronavirus struck, people across industries were sent home to work and once-bustling office spaces turned ghostly quiet. Months later, many offices remain empty. And, as the pandemic rages on (and on), and businesses delay asking people to return, one must question the future of the office. Will employers need less space (or more) to bring its people back? Do businesses need people back? [Continue]
The state of Wyoming is on the brink of becoming a trailblazer in the world of cryptocurrency now that it has awarded its first special purpose bank charter allowing institutions to receive deposits and serve as custodians of digital assets. The Wyoming Division of Banking granted San Francisco-based Kraken Digital Asset Exchange its first-ever Special Purpose Depository Institution charter on Sep. 16. [Continue]
Whether it’s a data breach that exposes private information about your customers to the public, an attack that locks up your servers, or even a full-fledged strike that wipes clean all of your data, bankers need to defend against a range of threats. As the number of devices on which customers expect instant access to their data proliferates, the number of opportunities for bad things to happen notches upward. [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]
With apps and growing demand for mobile payment options gradually pushing cash aside, banks face a conundrum on how to adjust to an ever-changing, competitive marketplace. It comes down to technology, what options the bank goes with, how effectively banks incorporate that into their culture, and how much they invest in it. [Continue]