The Banker Next Door

Bank investment portfolios were hit hard when the Federal Reserve increased interest rates a few years ago leading to negative AOCI and unrealized losses in their bond portfolio. Should banks sell those underwater securities to reposition their existing investments for positive income? The answer, it depends. This episode examined an article from Bank Director titled “Selling bonds at a steep loss...

Citi just rolled out their new rewards card named Strata Elite to compete with AMEX and Chase. Unfortunately, the rollout did not go according to plan as a number of customers were locked out of their accounts and have not been able to utilize the card much less realize the benefits. This episode examined an article from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled “They signed up for Ci...

The Federal Reserve, OCC, and FDIC are all working on slimming down exam requirements for Community Banks. Some of the potential changes include regulatory actions such as “matters requiring attention,” scrapping any requirements that are not found in law or regulation, increasing the existing threshold from $10 billion to $30 billion, changing what pre-exam documentation is required, and tailorin...

Chad Hull, Investment Banker, with Janney Montgomery Scott returns to discuss the current bank M&A market. Chad and I discuss some of the large banking M&A transactions recently announced. We consider the pickup in M&A activity throughout 2025 and what changes are driving the uptick. Chad provides his thoughts on why the activity could be sustained into 2026. In addition, Chad talks ab...

Banking regulators are considering deposit insurance reform to better protect consumers and businesses. Congress is also considering deposit insurance reform through a proposed act titled the Main Street Depositor Protection Act (S.2999). The question is, who will the deposit insurance reforms really benefit? Is this reform focused on consumers and businesses or billionaires? This episode examines...

According to an FBI report, bank robberies in the U.S. have declined from a high of approximately 9,500 in 1992 to less than 1,400 in 2023. Why have bank robberies decreased? This episode reviews are article from Investopedia titled “The death of the bank heist: Where have all the bank robbers gone?” This article presented five theories, 1) not a big enough payout, 2) fewer targets, 3) easier to g...

A war of sorts has broken out between Fair Isaac and the three credit reporting bureaus (Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian) over pricing and usage of the FICO credit scoring model. This episode examines how American’s overall credit scores are performing, how rental payments can be used to improve consumer credit scores, and the effects on consumers of the FICO dispute. This episode reviews multi...

The U.S. auto industry is currently dealing with a myriad of problems that include a pull back on electric vehicles, tariffs, a fire at aluminum producer Novelis, underwater car trade-ins, concentration of purchasing by the wealthy, subprime delinquency, and microchip issues with Dutch (CCP controlled) company Nexperia. Some of these issues will be solved faster than others but the auto industry,...

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

This is a BND: Strategy Room bonus episode from the 10-25-2025 live stream. This episode details the current subprime auto industry crisis, which has seen the recent failures of Tricolor Holdings, First Brands, and now Primalend. A number of banks have gotten ensnared in this crisis.

Dan Knezevich has been a commercial appraiser for over 30 years. Dan’s background in appraising commercial properties is extensive. We discuss the different valuation methodologies, pricing for commercial appraisals, what constitutes a commercial property, valuing different property types, and other services his firm provides. Dan is the President of Quest Realty Advisors, LLC (“QRA”) a full-servi...

Erebor bank earns preliminary government approval to proceed as a new startup bank. Erebor is seeking to target many of the same customers from Silicon Valley Bank. The approval for Erebor follows a wave of other companies and startups seeking to become banks. This episode examined articles from The Wall Street Journal and S&P Global Market Intelligence, both require subscriptions. The Wall St...

The CFPB collected approximately 14,000 comments on the 1033 rule aka Open Banking rule during the open comments period. The Open Banking debate drew comments from many different groups, which included banks, fintechs, advertisers, food suppliers, consumer advocates, convenience stores, credit unions, grocers, retailers, retirees, libertarians, mortgage lenders, taxpayers, and cryptocurrency group...

This is part 30 of the crypto series. Lots of activity in the crypto world! Founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, was pardoned by President Trump. US banks are starting to warm up to stablecoins. Zelle is getting into the international crypto competition. Banking panel says stablecoins must be simple. Fed Governor Michael Barr warns about stablecoin risks. Citi CEO says clients want tokenized deposi...

This is part 29 of the crypto series. Shareholders of Heartland Tri-State Bank received a favorable and somewhat unprecedented ruling from a judge in the crypto embezzlement case. The judge awarded bank shareholders all money recovered, and the FDIC got nothing! Heartland Tri-State Bank was a small bank in Kansas that failed in July of 2023 due to the CEO embezzling $47 million because of getting...

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

The SEC is continuing with charges against Ex-Silvergate Bank CFO. Silvergate Bank was the first bank to fail in the Spring Banking crisis of 2023. Silvergate was the main crypto bank in the country at that time and ran the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), which was the main rail system between the crypto world and the banking world. The failure of FTX in the fall of 2022 led to a run on deposit...

The account switching experience for commercial banking clients remains one of the most confounding issues. We delve into some of the main bottlenecks, which are redirecting payroll, merchant services, ACHs, customer payments, notifying vendors, and closure of legacy accounts. This is a process that can take 3 to 6 months to complete. The bank that can address this issue will gain a lot of commerc...

As banks continue to grapple with cybercrime that includes ransomware, phishing attacks, and business email compromise (BEC), they need to have an incident response plan. However, simply having an incident response plan is not enough. This plan needs to be updated, tested, and practiced annually. This episode examines an article from Independent Banker Magazine titled “Tackling familiar cyber thre...

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) has released their annual survey of Community Banks. Some of the reports’ key findings include community banker optimism is up, net interest margins, core deposit growth, cost of technology, and cost of funds are the main concerns. Regulatory burden fell from 1st to 6th in this year’s survey. Community banks feel that other regional banks are their p...

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued frequently asked questions (FAQs) on issues related to suspicious activity reports (SARs). The FAQs clarify regulatory requirements relating to structuring, continuing activity reviews, and a bank’s decision not to file a SAR. Scott Bessent stated, “These are commonsense yet consequential reforms that will ease regulatory burdens without und...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data released their Survey of Consumer Expectations for September 2025. The report found that household inflation expectations increased at short and long-term horizons and labor market expectations continue to deteriorate. Links to the press release and the report are included below.   Link: Short-Term Inflation Expectations Continue...

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

With the bank M&A market heating up, shareholder activism could be on the rise. This episode examines a recent article from Bank Director titled “Shareholder activism could heat up. Should boards fight back?” With the recent announced acquisition of Comerica by Fifth Third Bank, it was revealed that an activist investor played a role in pushing Comerica to seek a sale of the bank. What can ban...

The rise of so called ‘super apps’ that help small businesses to manage messaging, financial services, payments, and provide other tools could change the game for how banks manage their own apps. WeChat, in China, has been the prototype as the do everything app in the world. But now WhatsApp, google, and X, are all in on trying to create their own super app here in the U.S. What can banks do to co...