The Banker Next Door

ICBA recently released a white paper on bank cyber insurance. The paper discusses current market challenges which include escalating premiums and shrinking coverage, inconsistencies in underwriting, and exclusions, sublimits, and ambiguity. The current AI risk gap in cyber insurance is addressed. The paper then goes into insights and recommendations from community bankers. The paper then wraps up...

This is part 42 of the crypto series. Bitcoin has increased to $86K is the ‘crypto winter’ finally over? Circle gets a $100M investment from Binance to ramp up global push for their USDC coin. Bastion receives conditional approval from OCC to provide their ‘white label’ stablecoins for other businesses. The company will also manage custody of holding reserves and customer wallets. After The Clarit...

SBA approvals are down 18% in 2026 compared to 2025. Loans are down because the SBA had to fix a lot of the problems coming out of the Biden administration. Namely, lax underwriting, which led to delinquencies, and expanding the programs to some lenders that should not have had access. SBA loans to specialty trade contractors fell 22% through mid-2026 due to a new eligibility rule barring green ca...

On the eve of a new documentary titled “You Can See Everything” coming out in October, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the epic disaster that was Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Theranos was a “Decacorn” start up, meaning it had a $10B valuation, that provided state of the art blood-testing equipment that was supposed to revolutionize the healthcare industry. The company’s product and...

Bank News: WestStar Bank agreed to acquire Southwest Capital Bank, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. First National Bank of Omaha continues to grow through smaller acquisitions. The bank has announced two acquisitions in the last four months. M&F Bancorp rejected unsolicited offer from mystery bank and decided to move forward with Optus Financial merger. P&S CU agreed to merg...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. The AI trade is imploding! In less than 30 days the narrative went from everything is great, we are making money, its IPO time, to there might be a few problems with our Frontier AI, to these AI systems might destroy us, to please regulate us now!!! The IPOs are on hold, the revenue streams are all BS, companies have b...

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.

A new independent review conducted for the Federal Reserve by Starling Advisory Group on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank examined the role of the Federal Reserve supervisory staff to ask if they failed in their oversight of the bank. The report detailed seven critical findings. In releasing the findings, Michelle Bowman stated that the Fed supervisory staff should have known and that SVB’s fail...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. As the situation with Mark Walter and his companies continues to unfold, it appears that he used retirement assets for his spending binge on professional sports franchises. As this comes to light, BlackRock is hard at work to get Private Credit and other alternative assets stuffed into your 401(k). The narrative here i...

De Novo or start up credit unions are not performing well. Of the last five de novo credit unions, two have been liquidated and one is currently operating as “uncapitalized.” The two credit unions that were liquidated both failed within six months of starting, making them some of the quickest failures since 2016. Former National Credit Union Administration Chairman Todd Harper stated, “New credit...

Bank News: PNC, Regions, and Citizens executives don’t want to be distracted by potential M&A deals. PNC could be open to M&A, but current valuations make a deal unlikely. Citizens is open to bolt-on deals if they focus on the payments area. Bank7 is seeking to purchase 100% of Century Financial. Bank charter approvals more than double from 2025. Synapse victims turn to small-claims court...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. The Clarity Act failed to advance through the Senate on a 50-49 vote. It needed 60 votes to pass. This failure puts this bill in real jeopardy as the midterm elections approach and both houses of Congress have gone on recess. At the same time, the SEC cleared the way for tokenized stock. Was this a smart move on the pa...

This is part 41 of the crypto series. The Clarity Act failed to advance out of the U.S. Senate. The measure failed on a 50-49 vote. It needed 60 votes to pass. Every democrat and three republicans voted against it. The failure puts the bill in serious jeopardy with the midterm elections coming up in November and the House of Representatives in recess until after the election. Who is to blame? The...

According to Bank Director’s 2026 Technology Survey, banks are feeling the pressure from increased competition, emerging technology, and changing strategy. Key findings from the report include efficiency over growth, getting educated on artificial intelligence, gauging AI usage, integration challenges, prioritizing payments, and most not sold on crypto. A majority of bank executives view financial...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 12, 2026. Private Credit favorites Blue Owl and Jefferies face new issues. Jefferies is staring down a potential $500 million loss from Radiant World. Blue Owl Capital cut the value of its loans to Loparex to near zero. In addition, the current oil shock is testing Private Credit borrowers with high debt loads. Smaller borrowers...

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.

Who is Jane Street? They are a mysterious high frequency trading hedge fund on Wall Street that seems to have its hands in everything with some questionable behavior. Jane Street was started in 2000 by three former executives of Susquehanna International Group and an IBM developer. There is no public face to the firm, and they do not like publicity. New hires are discouraged from drawing any atten...

Italian bank Monte Dei Paschi (BMPS) has had quite the saga over the last two years. BMPS has had CEO issues, multiple potential merger partners, rogue board members, and tons of media! Everything a good banking soap opera needs. When last we left BMPS, Intesa Sanpaolo made an offer to purchase the world’s oldest bank seeking to create the “UBS” of Italy. BMPS responded by attempting to purchase B...

Security Bank & Trust President Andy Schornack worked with several employees to develop an AI credit workflow solution for processing commercial loans. Andy had investigated several fintech providers and found they had several product solutions, but the costs were prohibitive at five and six figures. These were very high costs for a $1.3 billion community bank to absorb. Andy’s wife, being in...

Bain & Company recently released a report detailing their outlook on U.S. bank M&A through 2030. Some of the key findings include: 1) there will be at least one bank to cross the $1 trillion assets threshold but could be as high as 2-3 via M&A, 2) There will be continued consolidation for small and larger regional banks, 3) There will be continued consolidation for community banks, 4)...

Bank News: Chime to buy Stride for $590 million. Chime outgrew their partner model. Will the Chime deal lead to further fintech-bank competition? EverBank to purchase WaFd in a reverse merger for an approximate cost of $3.9 billion. Does this merger have execution risk? John Marshall Bancorp to purchase in-state peer Eagle Financial Services for $253 million. Finward Bancorp considered 7 different...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 5, 2026. Bond market yields are not just increasing in the U.S. they are increasing all over the western world. France, Italy, UK, and Japan have all seen increasing 10-year treasury yields. The growing global debt of $350 trillion is getting very expensive to service. Inflation, the war with Iran, $40 trillion in national debt,...

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 episode reviewed recent data for bank IPO’s and capital raises, M&A activity, new charter requests, FDIC problem bank list, recent bank failures, the return of shareholder activism, and the impact of rising yields on accumulated other comprehensive income or AOCI. Capital raises through preferred equity (IPOs) picked up in the second quarter of 2026, but subordinated debt and senior debt...

Bank CEO compensation for the big 4 CEOs dramatically increased in 2025. Citigroup CEO, Jane Fraser, became the highest paid bank CEO with a pay package of $95.8 million. Wells Fargo CEO, Charles Scharf, came in right behind with a pay package of $94.5 million. JPMorgan CEO, Jamie Dimon’s, pay package was $40.6 million. Bank of America CEO, Brian Moynihan’s, pay package was $32.7 million. The list...