American Banker Podcast

It's been a rough year for fintechs and for the venture capital firms that fund them. Venture capital flows into financial technology companies dropped by 36% year over year to $6 billion in the third quarter of 2023. But Amy Nauiokas, founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, is optimistic about 2024.

The podcast discusses the criticisms of national bank regulators and their oversight failures. It explores the collapse of Silvergate Capital and the role of the Federal Reserve in preventing bank failures. The effects of the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy on banks' balance sheets are explored. The closure of Signature Bank and its involvement with crypto-related firms is discussed. The importance of keeping politics out of bank regulation is emphasized.

Penny Lee, president and CEO of the Financial Technology Association and Steve Boms, executive director of FDATA NA, explain what their members like about the proposed regulation and what they would change.

Community banks sometimes feel that they lack the budget and staff to compete with larger banks and fintechs on things like mobile and online banking, virtual assistants and most recently generative AI. Jim Perry, senior strategist at Market Insights, suggests steps they can and should take to stay relevant technology wise.

The case is not really about cryptocurrency but about fraud, points out Seoyoung Kim, department chair and associate professor of finance and business analytics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. But regulators and lawmakers are watching and the outcome of the trial will have repercussions throughout finance.

Johnson, chief experience officer at Citizens Financial Group, shares some of her concerns about advanced AI and plans to use it for purposes including contact center support and coding.

Bell, an attorney, founded Ready Life to help reduce the racial wealth and homeownership gaps by showing lenders that credit-score-less consumers have been responsible with their money, based on their daily transactions. Now he and Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, are buying a community bank just outside of Salt Lake City.

What are the best options out there for people living on the edge financially who have an emergency expense? The Global Black Economic Forum and the Center for Business and Economic Research recently completed a study called the 2023 Cash Poor Report that dives into this question.

Financial institutions can trade billions of dollars per day and handle sensitive data for millions of customers across the globe, which make them enormously attractive targets for cybercriminals. Their defenses must be top notch and ever evolving to keep up with this threat, but FIs' infrastructures are usually vast and complex, straddling old, legacy mainframes and cutting-edge, cloud-based applications that can create security gaps. Moreover, regulations mandate that some divisions within institutions are siloed from each other, which complicates communication and a coordinated defense against cyber criminals. In this difficult security environment, a hyper focus on integration is critical. FIs should look to consolidate tools to fewer vendors so they have less to manage. Many are grappling to understand their security posture and vulnerabilities, how to efficiently manage cloud-based applications, and whether they should buy or build their own security solutions. In this podcast, experts in the field will tell stories from the trenches – the good, the bad, and the ugly when protecting some of the largest, most complex networks in banking.

Though generative AI has limitations and risks, there is a cost to ignoring it, according to Ryan Favro, a managing principal at Capco.