'Terminal Uniqueness': Comments of the Week
May 27, 2016 7:30 AM
American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and our social media platforms.
Challenging another reader's belief that older millennial customers offer banks more growth potential than other age groups:
"I am going tired of the terminal uniqueness theme that plays in almost every article or study written about millennials. Boomers were terminally unique once to the chagrin of their parents and now look at us more like good ol' mom and dad than we care to admit. Same thing will happen to millennials. FIs just need solutions particularly in the digital channels that allow them to find, service and retain profitable customers regardless of generation."
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On smaller banks increasingly looking beyond their core providers for mobile solutions:
"Good enough me too type solutions (basically what is offered by most cores) are not good enough for FIs down market in particular unless their only goal is to be acquired for cheap."
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On the dangers of "too big to fail":
"Whether we like it or not, too-big-to-fail is real and won't go away, no matter what we might like to believe. Forcing it to go away by fiat is to risk the entire U.S. economy to future catastrophe. It is akin to removing all the life-boats from a cruise liner. It is bad public policy."
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On Fitbit potentially expanding into the wearable payments business:
"Wouldn't it be great if Fitbit measured your financial health rather than just help you spend money more easily? So what does that full-fat latte do not only to your waistline but also to your bottom line?"
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On a proposal to require commercial borrowers to submit disclosures on how they expect climate change to affect their businesses:
"Banks are well aware of hail storms, flooding, fire and such hazards and generally mitigate those possibilities by appropriate risk transfer to insurance companies. The ultimate intent of a proposal such as this is to limit the availability of credit to 'out of favor' industries. Let's kill this idea and move on."
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Rebutting an op-ed that questions Walmart's focus on PIN authentication:
"Walmart obviously understands that chip and pin won't prevent online fraud. What chip cards do prevent is having card holder information breached like what happened with Home Depot and Target. Furthermore, chip and pin is more secure than chip and signature because if your card is stolen and requires a pin to make a transaction you are still safe from having your card used in a card present environment if you were smart enough not to write your pin down and keep in your wallet."
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On whether development of faster payments tools should include speed bumps to allow consumers to reconsider and even abort a purchase:
"These are among the important issues that are constantly overlooked in the hyperdrive to 'real time.' Real time is treated as an unqualified, self evident good, but that is not at all clear when one gives it a moment's thought."
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