October 19, 2021

As a community bank, nothing is more important to your success than understanding your customers and delivering value. What’s different today? There was a time when understanding your customer’s needs and overall financial behavior was, well, easy. Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case anymore.

Recently, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing entitled “A Biased, Broken System: Examining Proposals to Overhaul Credit Reporting to Achieve Equity.” Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters called for this creatively named hearing to gain support for legislation to create a government-run credit bureau within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The pressure on banks to really step up their digital experience game is, as we all know, greater than ever. Branch banking, according to pundits, is probably going away. “Probably” because, honestly, no one really knows, right? It sure looks like it, however.

Let me tell you an ugly secret that not even my closest colleagues know about me: before my long career in banking, I was absolutely clueless when it came to my personal finances.

The Biden administration’s proposal to use bank account data to combat tax evasion would undoubtedly raise banks’ compliance burden and, even more concerning, would threaten the privacy of bank customers.