BankThink

Credit unions can capitalize on bank scandals such as the recent fraud uncovered at Wells Fargo, but they have to lay the groundwork first.

Banks are just as vulnerable to the kind of nation-state cyberattack Yahoo suffered, and can avoid some of the mistakes it made, says Samuel Visner of the consulting firm ICF and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

The Wells Fargo scandal is an example of what happens when a system requires you to effectively hand over the keys to your identity to strangers as if you were giving them your car keys. Moreover, it is a call to banks to restore trust and become leaders in fixing the ID problem once and for all.

Mary Mack is beginning damage control as she overhauls Wells' sales culture; Dorothy Savarese talks diversity of bank sizes as she becomes chairman of the ABA; and Elizabeth Warren implores the president to demote Mary Jo White. Also, industry manbassadors talk work-life balance and the importance of flexibility for women as Visa's CEO resigns to devote more time to family. And a couple of small activist firms are taking on gender bias at the world's largest companies.

While card issuers took a step in the right direction by replacing the fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards of the past, they made many missteps that complicated and weakened the EMV transition.

Rather than continuing to invest in inclusion initiatives that fail to drive diversity, banks should embrace these three programs instead.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...More trouble for Wells: The California Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Wells Fargo to determine if bank employees engaged in criminal identity theft and false impersonation to open accounts for customers without their permission. "There is probable cause to believe that employees of Wells Fargo Bank unlawfully accessed the bank's computer system to obtain the PII [personally identifiable information] of customers," the state's affidavit said. "The bank's employees then used the unlawfully obtained customers' PII to commit false impersonation and identity theft by opening unauthorized accounts, credit cards, and various other products that resulted in the accumulation of fees and charges for Wells Fargo."

The fact that the number of cybersecurity incidents affecting companies is rising at an alarming rate year over year hardly raises eyebrows anymore.

It’s a bit premature to celebrate the recent court decision finding the CFPB’s structure to be unconstitutional, according to a veteran credit union attorney who suggests the final outcome on this is far from decided.

Rather than addressing a pressing need like an economic crisis, a fintech charter would place the federal government in the business of choosing winners and losers in a market, with the potential to distort the banking system.