Martin County, Minn., used to be all dairy 50 years ago. Now, with more than 150 hog farms, the county bills itself as Bacon Capital USA. Today, the county has three dairy farms, including that of Lori and Bob Calkins. In addition to dairy farming, Lori Calkins is a large-animal veterinarian who speaks of changes in dairy farming that have helped the industry become so much more efficient. [Continue]
Legislation this season in Illinois has brought to light new concerns regarding consumer protection and elder financial abuse. During last year’s Illinois General Assembly, bill SB2385 as originally written would have allowed nursing homes to require residents to give them power of attorney over their bank accounts so the nursing homes could check on residents’ eligibility for Medicaid. [Continue]
In the last 12 months, Bob Worth has lost three Minnesota farming friends to suicide. Two of the men, aged 50 and 55, faced liquidation of their family farms. With the third, Worth said it was definitely not financial stress. He was “one of the best farmers in the area,” Worth said. “He just thought he was going downhill. As much help as he got, tried to get — medical help, psychological help — he just knew he was a failure.” [Continue]
The creativity that helped Richwood Bank launch a marketing consultancy has also helped the bank increase its lobby traffic and support its local economy. In 2015, when Richwood Bank decided to update its lobby, it needed to respond to two consecutive years of decline in lobby traffic. Bank CEO Chad Hoffman wanted to create a fresh experience in order to turn that decline around. [Continue]
Call it miscommunication, serendipity or divine intervention, but the first meeting between marketer Heather Wirtz and banker Chad Hoffman has resulted in a groundbreaking way for Richwood Bank in Richwood, Ohio, to earn money. [Continue]
Audrey Johnson, longtime outside director at New Market Bank in Elko New Market, Minn., knows a thing or two about banking, and it’s knowledge borne of her time sitting across the desk from her banker. Though she didn’t have an official title at the real estate management company headed by her husband, Johnson was always actively involved in the finances of the family business. [Continue]
The commercial banking program is a certificate at Texas A&M, College Station, which began in 2011 with 16 students getting their bachelor of business administration degrees in finance. It was co-founded by a small group of bankers who were school alumni and faculty. [Continue]
Ask college students to consider a career in banking and most will automatically think Wall Street. But increasingly, colleges and universities have designed undergraduate finance programs with an eye to the needs of commercial and community banking. [Continue]
For Kent Belasco, becoming director of the commercial banking program at Marquette University in Milwaukee was the start of a second career. He had retired as executive vice president, chief information and operations officer at First Midwest Bank in Itasca, Ill., after 37 years in banking. In mid-2015, Marquette University was looking for a finance professor with teaching experience and a commercial banking background. MU had begun to understand “not all students wanted to be investment bankers,” Belasco said. He began to build a curriculum during his last year at the bank. [Continue]
In the span of one February weekend in 2018, just days after a forum was convened at the Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen, Minn., to discuss the region’s opioid crisis, 10 additional overdoses occurred in the county, three of them fatal. [Continue]