Main Street Banking: A Podcast for Community Bankers

With things changing in the markets rapidly, we are going to bring on Jim Reber with ICBA Securities to update listeners with economic news...when economic news happens. As you know, Jim's done our quarterly Main Street Economic Update for awhile now...but we know that, these days, quarterly isn't timely enough for bankers. Today, we discuss the unemployment numbers and some ideas on the brand new...

We all know that one of the impacts we are going to face with this COVID-19 is the credit quality of our loans. Is it the most important thing facing our world today, clearly not. But it is coming...and it is something we need to have a game plan for as we continue on with 2020 and in to 2021.

We pick up where we left off yesterday with Jimmy and Joshua's conversation about the issues many community banks face with remote working. Now, more than ever, the ideas of contingency planning and technology is so important for us to grasp. For more information, please check out https://sawyersjacobs.com/

We are facing a new paradigm right now in community banking. Many of our notions on remote working, security, and technology in general is being challenged. And there are no better friends of community banking in this area than Jimmy Sawyers and Joshua Jacobs. For more information about Sawyers and Jacobs, check out their website: https://sawyersjacobs.com/

Thanks for coming back! If you haven't heard part 1 from yesterday's episode, take some time and listen to that as well. These are tough times for all of us...but there is still good in the world and you can do this!!

These are tough times for all of us in community banking. How do we handle the stresses we are currently facing? Whether we are working remotely or we are working in closed lobbies through drive-thru windows, the past few weeks have seen an enormous amount of changes and anxieties. Brad Federman spends two days with us talking about this very topic.

We know that things are crazy right now. I wish there was something that we could do to make it all go away and get back to the way things were a month ago. But...what we can do is get you content that meets you right where you are. I'm hoping that next week's schedule goes a long way to making this situation a little easier for you, your employees, your customers...everyone.

Taking a little detour from our normal posting schedule. People are trying to figure out their lives in this COVID-19 environment and community banks are no different. We've got communities to serve, stockholders to answer to, and most of us have never seen this type of environment before. What do we do? Today, Greyson Tuck and Ben Pankonin talk to us about how to be strategic and still tell that...

ICBA Live 2020. Bold Vision/Clear Focus. From Orlando...the city where dreams come true. There really is no better setting for a collection of dreamers like community bankers. And that's what we are...dreamers...and there's nothing wrong with that. We have the strength and knowledge to say our banks can be better..our communities can be better...our nation can be better...and we go out and find a...

We've heard about it. We read about it on social media. We have some vague memory of it from our younger days...but what on Earth is this LIBOR transition and how is it going to impact your bank? Here is the website that Jim mentions about possible contract language you might want to consider for your loans impacted by the LIBOR transition. https://www.newyorkfed.org/arrc/fallbacks-contract-langua...

We all know that FinTech is going to (and already has) radically changed the way banks do business. But when community banks partner with venture capital to create relationships where both FinTech and community banks prosper, it's truly awesome what can happen. Here are two cohorts from ThinkTECH 2.0, Griffin Technologies and LendSMART. For more: ThinkTECH 2.0: https://www.venturecenter.co/icbathi...

There is a growing gap between what is being discussed online and what is actually threatening to banks. CECL is going to be a game-changer and the lack of conversation we are having about it is concerning. If you'd like to read more, take some time to read this article in American Banker. https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/cecl-is-a-real-threat-to-the-financial-system

We start off the year with our Executive Director, Chris Kelley. Chris is a a long-time community banking advocate and proponent of training's role in the culture of a bank. When we think about training and all that's involved with that, there's really three different approaches that we need to take in our banks...onboarding, reboarding, and upboarding. We talk about that today, what those mean, a...

It's the end of one year...and the start of another. Rather than wrapping up our year with a "best of" or "mixed tape" episode, I thought it'd be fun for the Barret staff to sit down and talk about our 2019 and 2020. And as you can probably tell by this episode...we have a lot of fun together!! Happy New Year to you, your bank, and most importantly to your family and loved ones!

We're wrapping up an...interesting...year this year in economic news. Dare we say, it looks...calm for the foreseeable future?! We never know what's going to happen in the macroeconomic world but there are some strategies that you can do in your investment portfolio as we end the year. Now's a good time to talk to your investment experts! For more information, you can visit ICBA Securities page at...

Greyson Tuck is a consultant, attorney, and board member of Gerrish Smith Tuck, PC here in Memphis. He is also on our faculty of the Barret Graduate School of Banking and is a perennial favorite of our students. He travels all over the country talking with community banking executives and, as a result, has the pulse of what community banking directors and executives are thinking heading into 2020....

Jimmy Sawyers is a long time friend and supporter of Barret and he is also one of the premier voices in the community banking industry when it comes to tech and security for banks. Every year, he puts out a Top 10 predictions for the year and, in a twist on the top 10 trope, we decided we'd follow up with him at the end of the year to check in on those predictions and also, possibly, get a teaser...

You may have heard about in-school branches in a local high school. We'd like to introduce you to one here in the Memphis area that is doing an outstanding job in teaching, not only banking, but the soft-skills we want professionals to have as well as financial literacy that is so desperately needed in the banking industry. There's lots of ways to implement a plan like this...but it's so important...

Stepping "outside the vault" again for an episode, we're going to talk about the Banker's Build that the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis has started on here in the local Memphis market. We're happy to be promoting this event...not only because of the AWESOME work Habitat does, but also as an example of the good that the community banking industry can do!! For more information, check out th...

It's one thing to have an expert talk to us about ideas for digital marketing and a bank's social media presence. It's another to have one of the best practitioners of the social media arts tell us her views and some of her best practice. It's quite another when they both sit down and discuss the issue. To top it off...having Eric Cook and Emily Mays on the show, with their personalities, makes fo...

It's a wrap. Another successful ICBA LeadFWD conference in the books and I can't wait to see the fruits of this years event.

Day 1 is wrapped here in New Orleans! Good conversations with great banking leaders!

We're circling back to CECL.  There's been some changes to the implementation of the standard that need discussing, but we also wanted to add a fresh perspective on the preparation.  One of the things that came out in this conversation is the quality of the data that will be needed.  Yes, that data may be more expensive, but there's a lot to be said for knowing your loan portfolio's data better th...

With all the questions on yields and yield curves and negative interest rates that we have heard, we decided to have an "early" Main Street Economic Update and bring in Jim Reber to talk to our listeners about what's been going on in the markets. If you're not familiar with ICBA Securites, you need to go to their website (https://www.icbasecurities.com/) and sign up for The Bond Academy and their...

Kicking off our "Outside The Vault" series, Darin Hollingsworth of the Working Gratitude podcast and Odonata Consulting sits down with me to discuss gratitude and how it interacts with financial services.