A bank CEO’s front-seat view of risk, survival and recovery
Release Date: 06/21/2024
Inside ABA’s new Treasury Check Verification System API
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
ABA’s to provide members with free access to the Treasury Check Verification System is now live. On a special joint episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast and ABA Fraudcast — presented by — ABA anti-fraud experts Paul Benda and Hannah Ibberson discuss the platform and how banks can put it to use. Among other topics, Benda and Ibberson discuss: The scale of physical U.S. Treasury checks and why they remained a potential vector for fraud How and why ABA developed the platform How ABA member bank employees — including frontline staff — can access the portal to verify a payee Ways...
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Staying close to clients amid tariff-driven volatility
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
Amid tariff-related volatility, how are small and midsize businesses and the banks that serve them faring? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by — John Buran, the president and CEO of Queens-based Flushing Financial discusses how tariff and trade policy-related volatility has compounded commercial client uncertainty based on interest rates over recent months and why uncertainty has slowed loan growth and investment. However, Buran also notes that lending has improved in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, “possibly...
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Old National's Jim Ryan on the things that really matter
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
Jim Ryan has led Old National Bank through a massive wave of growth — through major mergers and organic growth, the Evansville, Indiana-based bank has reached $70 billion in assets and a footprint that extends from Minnesota to Tennessee. The bank has grown by 250% since Ryan moved into the CEO role in 2019. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by — Ryan discusses: The bank’s growing profile, including its new marketing partnership with the . Why the bank remains committed to its hometown of Evansville, even as it grows into a more...
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What bankers need to know about ‘First Amendment audits’
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
So-called “First Amendment auditors” have long filmed themselves trying to provoke police and other public officials into stopping them from recording in public settings. Now, some auditors are targeting banks, filming for hours outside bank branches and seeking to goad bank employees into calling law enforcement. The latest episode — presented by — features tips from bankers and security professionals on how to handle a First Amendment auditor at a bank location while protecting bank employees and customers. Read more in the . from ABA’s Bank Security Committee.
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Accelerating banking for quick-service restaurants
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
As independently owned and operated small businesses, fast-food restaurant franchisees have unique business needs. They have mobile and often part-time workforces, complex inventory management and the constant challenge of managing both a small business and being the face of a major brand. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by — Wendell Bontrager talks about how Sonata Bank is working with this unique market segment. For example, “we can come in at fractional costs to provide them things like telehealth, mobile phone insurance, pet insurance,...
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How a Georgia community bank supports government-guaranteed lending nationwide
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
Government-guaranteed lending requires special expertise and back-office functionality that grows increasingly expensive for smaller banks. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by — Chris Hurn and Jeremy Gilpin of Community Bankshares, a bank holding company in La Grange, Georgia, discuss how they are tackling that challenge. “To start one of these departments is very expensive for a lot of rural banks and credit unions,” says Gilpin, “It’s very prohibitive to enter the market space if you are a rural bank or even in an urban market where...
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Quantum computing’s shakeup in payments, cybersecurity
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
Quantum computing is an of processing information, and it has the power to solve extremely difficult computational problems much more quickly than binary computers. As the technology continues to advance, the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by — explores how payments and banking might be affected by the technology. Among other topics, the episode addresses: Applications for quantum computing in liquidity management and other complex payment and settlement chains. The risks quantum computing poses to current encryption technology and the...
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Why the Fed paying interest on reserves matters
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
The payment by the Federal Reserve of interest on bank reserves may sound like an abstruse matter of economic theory, but these payments are critical to bank operations and the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy. In the latest episode — sponsored by — ABA’s Jeff Huther discusses why proposals to end or reduce interest on reserves are misguided. Among other things, Huther discusses: Why ending payments could have a destabilizing effect on the financial sector. Why, under today’s accounting practices, the federal government would see no near-term bottom-line boost from...
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Travis Hill on the regulatory agenda at the FDIC
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
ABA’s Washington Summit just wrapped up, and this episode — sponsored by — features a main stage conversation with Travis Hill, acting chairman of the FDIC. In this episode, Hill discusses: Revisions to the . Transparency in by regulators. The future of bank capital policy after the Basel III “endgame.” Ethics and operational improvements at the FDIC.
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Play ball! Financial education home runs
ABA Banking Journal Podcast
April is Financial Literacy Month, a time when bankers think creatively about how to engage young people on topics of financial wellness. Citi’s and Roads to Success’s Bashan Fernandez for a discussion of Citi’s approach to making financial knowledge fun and engaging. In this episode — sponsored by — they discuss several innovative approaches, including: Citi’s for New York City middle schoolers, to be held on Teach Children to Save Day on April 22 at Citi Field in partnership with the New York Mets and several youth-serving nonprofits. Citi’s...
info_outlineBrent Beardall thinks bankers need to be more comfortable with risk. “We’re not out there taking crazy risk, but my point is don’t be afraid to fail,” says the president and CEO of WaFd Bank, based in tech-focused Seattle. “If you’re going to fail: fail quickly, fail small. That’s the two requirements I have, because if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.”
In the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Beardall discusses technology experiments that didn’t work, and those that did. He discusses the bank’s tech lab subsidiary Archway Software and its combined voice- and phone-based authentication for wire transfers.
Beardall discusses WaFd’s commercial real estate portfolio, which he notes is majority “stabilized multifamily, which is the safest asset class that we or any bank can make.” Office buildings — the most distressed CRE asset class — account for just 4% of WaFd’s portfolio, Beardall says, noting that CRE is a big and diverse sector beyond the office headlines.
Finally, Beardall talks about his remarkable personal story of surviving a deadly plane crash in early 2023. “You’re flying on a jet airplane to go to the Rose Bowl, and all of a sudden you go from being pretty good to fighting for your life and you realize just how vulnerable you are and how precious life is because it can change in a heartbeat,” he says. “People that I competed with, bankers that I would compete with, they set it all aside and said, “Let’s focus on helping each other.’ We have a lot more in common than we have in terms of differences, and let’s give equal weight to what we have in common and work together for the collective good.”