The Banker Next Door

This episode reviews a blog post from PCBB titled “How many minutes does your digital onboarding take?” Digital-only banks are landing 4 out of every 10 new checking accounts. Is your bank offering customers digital online account opening? If so, how long does it take to open an account? What is the customer experience like? Some ways that banks can improve this process include 1) Prioritize speed...

This episode reviews a blog post from PCBB titled “Why cloud-based lending solutions could be the future.” With the continuous increase in technology, regulatory requirements, and changing customer needs, should your bank consider moving to a cloud-based lending solution? This blog post offers five ways in which cloud-based lending solutions can help to improve your internal operations and custome...

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 27 of the crypto series. In this episode we review a series of crypto related articles. The hottest business trend this summer is buying crypto. New company Ether Machine wants in on the action. Trump Media and Technology Group turns a profit while continuing to build its crypto stake. Team-ups all over the place with Goldman Sachs, BNY, Coinbase, and PNC. Regulators continue to move...

This episode examines a series of articles around artificial intelligence (AI). Tesla signs deal with Samsung to make AI chips. Musk also raises money for xAI chips. Altman didn’t expect banks to take to AI so soon. OpenAI signs deal with UK. Jenson Huang has serious clout in Washington. JPMorgan overhauls quantum computing. Wells Fargo taps google cloud for agentic AI push. Gen Z has potential jo...

This episode examines the Federal Reserve’s July 2025 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS). The survey addresses changes in the standards and terms on, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households over the past three months. In the 2Q 2025, there were generally tighter lending standards and weaker demand for C&I and CRE loans. For households, there are generally unchanged lend...

This episode examines Bank Director’s 2025 Governance Best Practices Survey. This survey looks at how bank boards are being run. How are they conducting oversight, examining risk, and executing strategy. Key findings from the report include setting expectations, virtual deliberations, lengthy board packets, leading the board, and new perspectives. A link to the report is included below. Link: 2025...

This episode is a review of The President’s working group on digital assets report titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.” The report is lengthy, but full of great information. Key topics include the digital asset ecosystem, digital asset market structure, banking and digital assets, stablecoins and payments, countering illicit finance, and taxation. The report...

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 and article from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). The blog post is titled “Why options mania is a contrarian indicator.” The article is titled “In this frothy market, it’s boom times for brokers like Robinhood.” Options trading has exploded in the last five years due to going electronic and the innovation of products such as zero-day-to-expiry cont...

This episode examines an article from Independent Banker Magazine titled “How to build an AI policy at your community bank.” Does your bank have an AI policy? Not sure where to start? This article offers four steps your bank should be following to set up an AI policy. 1) Figure out where AI is already being used in your bank. 2) Set guidelines for bank employees’ use of AI. 3) Assess the customer...

This episode reviews ICBA’s The Genius Act: A Summary for Community Banks. The report includes the following topics: permitted payment issuers, composition of reserves, authorization for bank custody, application of AML, tailored capital, liquidity, and risk management rules, and timetable for implementation.

This episode examines a blog post from PCBB titled “Move over SEO. GEO is the new sheriff in town.” Search Engine Optimization or SEO has been the dominate strategy for getting your bank or business to the top of the list on Google search for years. As AI-backed internet searches continue to grow, a new strategy called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is emerging. GEO is the next generation of...

This episode examines two articles from The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) titled “Wall Street’s Big, Bad Idea for Your 401(k)” and “Retirement account and emergency savings? 401(k)s increasingly play dual role for many workers.” There are big potential changes coming to the 401(k), the question is are they good changes? It becomes a bigger question when we examine how people are curr...

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.

In this episode we review two articles from Bank Director titled “Rising bankruptcies are a warning sign for banks” and “Banks should not chase loan growth right now”. There is a strong correlation between rising business bankruptcy filings and commercial loan write offs. Yet, commercial delinquencies and loan write-offs remain very low. Should banks be preparing for a turning of the credit cycle?...

This episode examines two blog posts from PCBB titled “The rise & risks of shadow banking” and “Why small businesses choose non-bank lenders”. Shadow banking has grown through technological advancements, lack of regulation, increased demand for credit, and cost efficiency. Because of this, shadow banking poses several risks to traditional banking. Therefore, what are non-bank lenders in the sh...

This is part 26 of the crypto series. In this episode we review the BIS Annual Economic Report for 2025. Specifically, section III - The next-generation monetary and financial system. This report considers how Tokenization represents a transformative innovation. Tokenized platforms with central bank reserves, commercial bank money, and government bonds can lay the groundwork for the next-generatio...

This episode examines ICBA’s Advocacy in Action for the 3rd quarter of 2025. This report covers all the ‘hot button’ regulatory issues in the banking industry. Issues covered include digital asset regulatory framework, trigger leads, challenges to 1071 rule, support for agriculture, taxation of larger credit unions, ICBA check fraud task force, Section 1033 Rule, CRA, GSEs, and FHLBs. A link to th...

This episode is an interview with Mac Thompson, who is the Founder & President of White Clay.  We discuss how White Clay’s software helps banks and credit unions maximize profitability within a product or business unit. How you can fully utilize existing data to build stronger relationships with your customers. How White Clay can help with balance sheet management and thus strategic planning....

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 Banking Drive titled “Why small banks may shun Zelle.” The Zelle payment network is owned by Early Warning Services (EWS). EWS is owned by the largest banks in the U.S. Zelle is a P2P platform, which is currently the third largest behind Venmo and Cashapp. Many smaller banks around the country have not signed up to use Zelle because of higher transaction rates...

This episode examines a blog post from PCBB titled “Key factors behind lower losses in 2025 Stress Test results.” This blog post takes a deeper dive into the recent Stress Test results. The Stress Test results were influenced by three main factors. 1. Less severe scenario due to countercyclical design. 2. Revised measurement of private equity exposures. 3. Higher net revenue from improved bank per...

This episode examines an article from Independent Banker Magazine titled “Kari Mitchum: It matters to community banks who has master accounts.” The article focuses on Federal Reserve master accounts and how only traditional highly regulated banks have historically had access to them. More recently, crypto-native and non-traditional financial companies have been seeking to get access to master acco...

This episode examines multiple articles around artificial intelligence. The Pentagon just awarded AI contracts to Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI. Sam Altman has become President Trump’s new buddy on AI. The epic battle for AI talent. Google hires Windsurf CEO. CoreWeave’s purchase of Core Scientific did not go as planned. CoreWeave and Blackstone to invest over $30 billion to establish data ce...