BankThink

Financial services providers are jockeying and collaborating with each other for the opportunity to serve an increasingly popular underserved market.

In support of its claim that foreign governments are not subject to the Bank Holding Company Act, the Fed has only a speech given decades ago by a former Fed Governor, John LaWare, and more recent testimony to Congress by the Board's current general counsel, Scott Alvarez.

I just don't understand the argument that it is more important for banks to be able to compete with equal capital levels in Shanghai than in Omaha — unless big banks care more about bringing jobs to China than small business loans to middle America.

One Big Picture Issue worthy of some discussion that will not be on the agenda at NAFCU's annual convention this week in San Francisco: how have those assessments and thin-as-a-shadow margins and still-dragging recession changed credit unions — for the worse?

With the recent — and somewhat lingering — recession causing many folks to ponder new ways to make money, some of them venture down the wrong path and take desperate measures like robbing, people, banks and credit unions. To mitigate this criminal activity, we researched and came up with five cost-effective ways for credit unions to help secure their branches from these violent crimes. Here are a few things we discovered that can be implemented for under $2,500.

If merchants want all the rights and privileges of consumer card usage, they should sit at the same table of responsibility the issuers do.

We are allowing the retailer organizations to tell our story. How the heck do they know what it costs banks, credit unions, or the VISA and MasterCard networks to run these transactions?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will usher in a new era in regulation for credit unions. Fortunately, credit unions' core principles provide a solid foundation for addressing some of the CFPB's primary goals.

Five central strategies for measuring and improving the member lifetime value of our member bases, critical for enhancing our member-centric models in order to produce sustainable revenue and profitability.

Though its investigation into Morgan Keegan laid out extensive evidence that employees actively misled investors, the SEC's settlement signals the limits of current enforcement.