Bank Nerd Corner

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Mike Silver, a partner at Spencer Fane, for a deep dive into two landmark recent Supreme Court decisions that promise to reshape the administrative state and financial regulation.  Mike explains the facts, arguments and potential impacts of the Trump v. Slaughter decision, which ruled 6-3 that President Donald Trump could remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter wit...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Christian Ruppe,  Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at ImpactFI. Christian brings an interesting perspective to banking. He founded a fintech in college to help students save money, and ended up selling to banks — an industry he knew nothing about at the time. After selling the company, he spent six years at two banks, learning the ins and outs of financial services and...

In this June episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and Fintech Takes' Alex Johnson dive into the latest stories in the worlds of banking and fintech — before taking an extended detour into the world of soccer. On the agenda: Bill Pulte's brief second job, a debate about how to interpret nascent signs of life at the CFPB, and the latest developments on the stablecoin and tokenized deposit front...

In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner, Kiah welcomes Justin Steffen, a partner at Barack Ferrazzano, for a deep dive into Payward Interactive v. Etana Custody — better known as Kraken versus the bankrupt trust company that allegedly lost its money. The conversation goes well beyond crypto drama and has implications for the broader financial space. There are reconciliation and comingling conce...

In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner's Closing Credits, Kiah and Catherine welcome in Brian Love, Head of Banking and Fintech Search at Travillian Group, to discuss the 1992 film “Glengarry Glen Ross.” The film follows a group of real estate salesmen over roughly 24 hours as they compete for leads, fight to keep their jobs and resort to manipulation, deception and worse. The movie brings up...

In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner's Banker's Hours, Kiah Haslett welcomes DJ Seeterlin, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Chesapeake Bank, a $1.7 billion community bank based in Kilmarnock, Virginia. Using Chesapeake Bankas an example, DJ walks Kiah through the process of figuring out what the different businesses across the institution share and how the bank can capitalize on that...

In this episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and Alex review some of the major announcements in banks’ favorite new topic — artificial intelligence. There’s news from the core providers and commercial banks, there’s the looming threat of Mythos and there’s some regulatory revisioning of model risk management and what that means for AI. They also chat about tack-on effects, like the lack of, a...

This week on Bank Nerd Corner, Kiah is joined by Darren Beyer, Chief Product Officer at Qolo, a payments infrastructure platform that works with banks on commercial payments, card issuing and treasury management. Darren's path to fintech is unlike most: he spent his early career at NASA working on space shuttle missions — and he says payments are actually more complex!  Banks are often limited by...

In this latest episode of “Closing Credits,” Kiah and Catherine are joined by John Heltman, Washington bureau chief at American Banker, to discuss the 1983 comedy “Trading Places.”  “Trading Places” is a rich text. Kiah, John and Catherine discuss commodities fraud, fraught social themes and pork belly futures as well as what constitutes a Christmas movie. John, a former CFTC reporter, explains th...

Bank Nerd Corner dives deep into Cornell Law Professor Dan Awrey's new paper, “Banking, Technology, and Instability,” and welcomes guest discussant Jason Mikula, an independent journalist who wrote a book on the topic and publishes the Fintech Business Weekly newsletter. Dan and Jason discuss how they framed and conceptualized the banking as a service business model and why that matters. Dan says...

In this episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Alex is back with dispatches from both ends of the spring conference circuit: Fintech Meetup and a fintech event hosted by the Bank of North Dakota, the only state-owned bank in the country.  Alex shared why he’s increasingly believes that artificial intelligence may be more immediately impactful for community banks than for the largest institutions, an...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Brian Fritzsche, Associate General Counsel and Vice President at the Consumer Bankers Association (CBA), for a conversation about the fraud ecosystem and potential policy responses recorded at CBA Live 2026 in San Diego. Brian authored CBA's comment letters to federal banking regulators on payments fraud, where he argues that banks cannot fight fraud alone. As part of the...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Jay Budzik, Senior Vice President at Fifth Third Bank, for a conversation recorded at CBA Live 2026 in San Diego. Jay Budzik is no stranger to artificial intelligence and uses his unusual resume and expertise to help Fifth Third leverage AI in its credit, lending and fraud functions. He shares which loan types and stages of the credit lifecycle are best suited for AI depl...

Bank Nerd Corner is excited to premier Closing Credits, a series where Kiah, joined by friend and American Banker reporter Catherine Leffert, discuss movies with banking, money or finance themes. For their debut episode, Kiah and Catherine rewatched the 2011 workplace drama 'Margin Call'. There’s a lot to discuss: the 2008 financial crisis, the crazy organizational chart, what they wish the movie...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Rajesh Narayanan, a professor in the Department of Finance at Louisiana State University. Rajesh recently coauthored a paper titled “The Decline of Branch Banking,” which was presented at the 2025 Community Bank Research Conference. Kiah and Rajesh discuss how the restructuring of the U.S. bank branch network is driven primarily by deposit activity, not lending. Rajesh ex...

In March’s episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and Alex spend some time with the biggest stories in the nonbank finance space.  First up is the surprise news that Kraken was approved for a limited Federal Reserve payment account, a little more than a month after the comment period closed on the Fed’s skinny account proposal. They then chat about private credit, including a brief history and...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Madeline Fredin, Vice President of Partnership Strategy at Alloy Labs Alliance. Madeline is an AI whisperer for Alloy Labs Alliance banks, where she helps them figure out how to deploy AI and even think about what a “black box” bank of the future could look like.  Madeline shares the story of IBM’s Deep Blue, a supercomputer chess bot that beat a grandmaster in 1997, to s...

Alex Johnson of Fintech Takes and Jason Mikula of Fintech Business Weekly join this very special episode of Bank Nerd Corner to talk about white-collar crime and the Forbes 30 for 30 list. The Forbes list identifies up-and-coming tastemakers, entrepreneurs, leaders and the occasional fraudster. Jason and Alex chat about their relationship to white collar crime before moving to a little show-and-te...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Bernadette Ksepka, senior vice president and deputy head of product management for the Federal Reserve System’s FedNow Service. FedNow is a real-time clearing and settlement service that supports instant payments in the United States. It was developed and launched by the Federal Reserve Banks in summer 2023. Bernadette shares her observations about how the first three yea...

In February’s episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and Alex explore new updates while treading familiar ground. Over the past couple of years, they’ve discussed different charter types and the regulators that approve them, de novo banking and accounting treatments. Under the second administration of President Donald Trump, these themes have found new life, interest and activity.  They chat ab...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Michael Perito, senior vice president and head of corporate strategy at Jersey City, New Jersey-based Provident Bank. Banker’s Hours explores the personalities in banking for some real talk on important, interesting and fun topics.  Mike and Kiah talk about his career trajectory of covering banks as a sell-side equity analyst to joining Provident Financial Services, where...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Heather focuses on labor data and consumer health — an important topic for healthy of financial institutions and the economy writ large.  She’s seen some concerning things in the last 12 to 24 months: a K-shaped recovery and an emerging jobless boom. One reason why could be how companies are leveraging artificial...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Brian Peters, a veteran of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and insurance giant AIG.  Brian writes the newsletter Perspectives on Risk, which draws on his experience in bank supervision at the New York Fed and as chief risk officer at AIG. He’s interested in financial stability, bank supervision and how technology, climate and demographics impact the economy.  Brian a...

In their first Bank Nerd Corner Squared episode of 2026, Kiah and Alex try their best to keep it light in the face of a lot of tough news. 2026 has been light on serious bank topics to date, but they talk about the interesting trend of fintechs buying banks, especially compared to the de novo charter applications from similar types of companies. They then hit some of the low points of the news cyc...

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Jason Henrichs, CEO at Alloy Labs Alliance. Having appeared on Breaking Banks numerous times over the year, Jason returns the favor to commemorate the New Year by ranting, reflecting and resolving with Kiah. Jason and Kiah catch up about their personal approach to resolutions before moving onto how banks should think about the work ahead of them in 2026. Jason shares the...