ABA Banking Journal Podcast

United Bankshares President Rick Adams talks about his experience with M&A (doubling in the past five years) and offers tips on providing quick and candid communication in the merger process. He also discusses how United Bankshares’ wealth management business gives it advantage over nonbanks with its ability to refer clients from the bank side, how it has built a successful indirect auto lending business and how it invests strategically in leadership development at all levels of the bank.

On the latest ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Laredo, Texas, bank CEO Ignacio Urrabazo talks about the unique challenges of banking on the U.S.-Mexico border. The requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act pose a significant challenge due in part to the interconnected nature of the border region economy and in part to being in a cash-intensive market. Distinguishing between issues of immigration and trade, Urrabazo also expresses concern about the threat of closing border entrances.

Kristie Holoch’s bank serves its fellow Nebraska community banks. With $1.7 billion in assets, Cornerstone Bank offers a correspondent banking division, loan participations—even an armored car service. Holoch discusses how Cornerstone Bank also partners with community banks through its acquisition strategy, providing investors and management at small-town Nebraska banks with an exit opportunity that keeps the bank in the hands of a Nebraska bank focused on small towns.

In this episode, podcast co-hosts Evan Sparks, Shaun Kern and Joan Gregory Saenz review highlights from ABA's just-concluded Washington Summit, including: Maxine Waters on cannabis banking and housing finance reform; Mike Crapo on housing finance reform and data security; Kevin Hassett on his 3% economic growth projection for 2019; and three Federal Reserve presidents on the role bankers play in Fed governance.

Community bank CEO Micah Bartlett’s views on “relationship banking” are formed by a fundamental insight: most people have a fraught emotional relationship with money. Meanwhile, community banks thrive on expertise about their customers, he adds. To help build that expertise—and lay a foundation for a supportive relationship—his bank's staff make thousands of outreach calls each year, not to pitch products but to understand how customers are doing.

Meet a third-generation family-owned community bank that has brought young, ethnic minority bankers onto its executive team. “Of our executive committee of five, three are Hispanic females. . . . Two of those under the age of 40,” says Lonnie Talbert, COO of Southwest Capital Bank. “We’re really focused in a couple of different areas: how can we get more younger people in the game, and also diversity as it relates to ethnicity and diversity of thought.”

With the Current Expected Credit Loss standard for loan loss accounting coming into effect for many banks — and the vast majority of bank assets — on Jan. 1, 2020, where are bank CFOs and managers in the process of implementing CECL, and what challenges are they seeing? ABA accounting experts Michael Gullette and Joshua Stein provide a CECL update on the latest issue of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast.

With consumer losses from phishing scams in 2017 up 375 percent from two years prior, according to FBI data, Colleen Tressler and Corey Carlisle explore the growing sophistication of phishing scams, how consumers should respond if they become a victim and where to report phishing, as well as resources that banks can share with their customers and employees — including a new infographic jointly released by the ABA Foundation and the FTC.

This week’s episode digs into the unique role—and the special difference—that the bank headquarters play in driving Tupelo’s economic performance: attracting a skilled workforce, providing robust competition for business loans, recruiting new companies to the region and benefiting from bank leaders’ executive-level local knowledge. Even major cities may not have a single large bank headquarters, and yet Tupelo has two. Is that an X-factor driving Tupelo’s performance?

Here’s a financial trivia question: What does Tupelo, Miss., have that much larger metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Phoenix and San Diego, don’t? The answer: Tupelo is the smallest city in America to have at least two banks with more than $10 billion in assets call it home. In an age of bank consolidation, what difference does it make to have two major hometown banks in a town Tupelo’s size? Co-host Evan Sparks takes listeners on a trip to America’s tiniest financial hub.

Heather Malcolm is a central Montana agricultural lender, but when she’s not at the bank, she works on her family’s cattle ranch, which allows her to stay closely in touch with the challenges faced by her loan customers. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Malcolm talks current pressures, such as commodity pricing, facing ag lenders and producers, and she outlines her recommendations for banks seeking to recruit the next generation of ag lenders.

For Valentine’s Day, we dig into trends on U.S. marriage and fertility rates and how they might affect financial institutions. Lyman Stone discusses how the trend of postponed marriage has driven the U.S. to its lowest-ever fertility rate; why reduced childbearing hinders individual Americans' use of bank products; the stark implications for a U.S. economy designed for growth; and how bankers can connect with their younger customers by demonstrating they care about their well-being. 

In this bonus episode in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s 210th birthday on Feb. 12, listeners will learn about how the examination of the Illinois state bank was the subject of Lincoln’s first recorded speech in the Illinois legislature; the importance to Lincoln of the rule of law; why, for Lincoln, well-regulated banks were a source of civic virtue; and how, to pay for the Civil War, Lincoln created America’s unique dual chartering system and provided for a sound currency

As community bankers face increasing pressures to deliver a truly awesome digital customer experience, many report feeling constrained in choice, speed and agility by core processors. Dave Hunkele discusses how Live Oak Bank is rethinking core technology — and how other services intersect with the core — to deliver a better customer experience. He and ABA’s Christopher McClinton also discuss Finxact, an open, cloud-based emerging core processing firm that both ABA and Live Oak have invested in.

Two top compliance executives at U.S. Bank describe how they built their their anti-trafficking strategy for the 2018 Super Bowl, how they partnered effectively with local law enforcement and how they train employees at all levels and in every business line to recognize signs of human trafficking. The result: 94 individuals arrested during the days leading up to Super Bowl LII -- many of them due in part to reports to law enforcement made by the bank as part of its anti-trafficking initiative.