The Banker Next Door

What is the history of the New York Stock Exchange or NYSE? This episode takes us through the humble beginnings of Wall Street in the 1700’s, through the 1800, 1900, and into the 2000’s. The episode reviews an article from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled “A History of the New York Stock Exchange’s Ups and Downs.”

A new analysis from ICBA shows that Credit Union purchases of community banks do in fact have a harmful economic effect on the communities which they mean to serve. This episode reviews an article from ICBA titled “New Analysis Shows Credit Union Acquisitions of Community Banks Harm the Communities That Can Least Afford It.” The analysis looks at the impact on SBA lending and residential mortgage...

This episode reviews a series of articles from S&P Global Market Intelligence (subscription required) detailing the events of the last week as a potentially massive fraud was uncovered involving a subprime auto lender named Tricolor Holdings. The fraud is alleged because, as of yet, no criminal charges have been filed. The potential losses are currently rippling through multiple banks includin...

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 examines a blog post from PCBB titled “Regulatory gaps slow US AI compliance adoption.” The blog post details how U.S. banks are falling behind global peers in adopting AI for compliance purposes. Federal deregulation and a patchwork of state rules seem to be impeding progress.  Also considered is overall AI adoption and how the adoption is high, but disruption is low. Furthermore, co...

This episode examines an article from Independent Banker Magazine titled “4 regulatory challenges community banks face today.” The article considers regulatory challenges that community banks are currently dealing with. The article names 4 primary challenges, which include 1) Navigating an uncertain regulatory environment, 2) Addressing supervisory focus on issue remediation, 3) Establish financia...

This episode examines an article from Bank Director titled “The debanking executive order is here.” Banks should prepare to respond to any potential federal scrutiny concerning relationships that were ended with clients that could be considered conservative-leaning or involved in digital assets. The article breaks down the executive order, considers its legality, and offers five ways banks can pre...

This episode examines Bank Director 2025 Ranking Banking Report. This report is an annual ranking of the 300 largest publicly traded banks. The report ranks the top 25 banks in the U.S. and then breaks down the best banks by total asset size. The categories include $50 billion and above, $5 billion up to $50 billion, and less than $5 billion. Westamerica Bancorp took 1st place for the top 25 banks...

This episode reviews S&P Global Market Intelligence 2025 top banking deposit franchises. The ranking has three categories banks with less than $3 billion in total assets, banks with total assets between $3 billion and $10 billion, and banks with $10 billion or more in total assets. Titan Bank took 1st place for best small community bank deposit franchise. Stride Bank took 1st place for best la...

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 examines an article from The Epoch Times (subscription required) titled “The power behind the photo: Why SWIFT, not sanctions, may shape the Ukraine endgame.” Most people are not familiar with the SWIFT system, what it does, and how much power it wields in the flow of global finance. SWIFT – the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is based in Belgium. While SWI...

This episode examines two articles, one from The Business Journals (subscription required) titled “Real estate commissions are taking a surprising turn after landmark settlement” and one from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled “Why a landmark settlement on realtor fees hasn’t cut costs”. After the landmark real estate industry settlement, it was anticipated that major changes w...

This episode examines an article from Banking Dive titled “Customers CEO talks lessons learned from Fed enforcement action.” Approximately one year ago the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank hit Customers Bank with an enforcement action related to its digital assets. With the changes in Presidential Administration, regulatory attitude toward digital assets, new regulations around stablecoins, and i...

This episode examines the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile for the second quarter of 2025. Overall results for the banking industry included net income decreased, net interest margin remained relatively unchanged, loan growth accelerated, domestic deposits increased, and asset quality metrics remained generally favorable. The deposit insurance fund (DIF) reserve ratio increased 5 basis points and no...

This episode is a review of the book MoneyGPT: AI and the threat to the global economy by James Rickards. This book explores the impact of AI on global financial markets, highlighting its potential to both enhance efficiency and trigger catastrophic economic disruptions due to its lack of human judgment. This review mainly focuses on chapter 2 in the book, which is titled Banking Mythos. This chap...

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 examines an article from Bank Director titled “Two CEOs discuss how their banks cultivate C-suite talent.” This article covers an interview with two bank CEOs to get their perspectives on hiring outside the industry, evolving skills, and connecting with board members. Some of the questions asked include is it possible to hire outside of the banking industry to fill roles in the C-suit...

This episode examines an article from Bank Director titled “In a room full of bankers, almost no one trusted their IT.” How confident is bank management that IT can turn investments into business outcomes? Turns out management is not very confident at all. There is a lack of alignment between technology decisions and business needs. Having the right leader makes all the difference. You should cons...

This episode examines an article from Bank Director titled “Invasion of the job snatchers: Digital bank workers have arrived” and a blog post from PCBB titled “Autonomous AI employees have arrived.” PCBB blog post discusses what is an AI worker, who is using AI workers in banking, what are the opportunities and risks, and what could be next for AI workers. The Bank Director article also discusses...

This episode examines an article from Independent Banker Magazine titled “Why community banks are revamping their CD strategies.” According to the article bankers should be considering the following: CD education is key, market competitively, personal service always wins and be proactive in marketing CDs. With the increase in interest rates in recent years deposit pricing, deposit strategy, and co...

This episode is an interview with First International Bank & Trust (FIBT) CEO, Peter Stenehjem. FIBT has been around since 1910 and has a rich history in North Dakota. Peter and I discuss the history of the bank, which ties in directly with the history of his family, as he is a 4th generation banker. We discuss FIBT’s strategy around banking-as-a-service and some of their key products Kotapay...

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 part 28 of the crypto series. In this episode we review an article from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled “Tequila, Drugs, and Torture: The spending binge of two crypto bros that ended behind bars.” This episode is the story of two crypto bros, William Duplessie and John Woeltz, who started out with large dreams of making it big in the business world only to have every...

This episode examines an article from Independent Banker Magazine titled “Is your bank overspending on tech?” How is your bank doing with its tech spending? This article lays out recommendations on how your bank can better control and get more out of its tech budget. Recommendations include 1) Address overlapping spending, 2) Avoid the pitfalls of unfit software, 3) Conduct a software audit, 4) De...

This episode reviews an article from Bank Director titled “CECL update eases the math for M&A.” One of the problems with M&A transactions is called the CECL double count. This is where an acquiring bank must make additional provisions for non-purchased credit-deteriorated loans (loans that have not experienced credit loss). A buyer must set aside EXTRA capital to cover expected losses on l...