BankThink

Millennials hate banks so much, they’d rather go to the dentist than listen to what banks have to say. And digital payment alternatives are taking advantage.

Washington is hopping with news this time around. It's been a blistering week for Wells Fargo, and Maxine Waters, Carolyn Maloney and Elizabeth Warren are among those using scathing rhetoric about the bank to try to kill Dodd-Frank reform efforts. Speculation is that both presidential candidates are looking to Silicon Valley to fill key posts in their administration, and talk of Sheryl Sandberg as Treasury Secretary is growing louder. Also, check out the "amplification" strategy women in the White House are using to help their voices get heard at important meetings.

Increasingly, our conversations about digital banking are only about technology. We must expand our dialogue to include ways to make digital banking empathetic.

For large banks, the risks of partnering with marketplace lenders do not matter. But small community banks can't afford to partner with competitors angling to poach their customers.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Wells probed: Federal prosecutors in at least three districts have begun investigating Wells Fargo's sales practices in the wake of last week's $185 million settlement. The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and San Francisco sent subpoenas to the bank. The investigation "is focusing on whether someone senior within the bank directed employees to falsify documents in conjunction with the opening of accounts and products without consumers' knowledge or authorization," the Journal reported. "Prosecutors are also focusing on whether there was willful blindness to sales practices on the part of executives at the bank."

"Rent-seeking" is a widely recognized economics term that refers to when people or groups try to obtain economic benefits for themselves through a subsidy in the political arena. In Washington, the term has special significance. Special-interest groups regularly try to gain subsidies by securing a special regulation that disadvantages competitors.

With the risk-taking culture at big banks — including that which contributed to the Wells Fargo fiasco — it's a good thing the House bill to weaken Dodd-Frank will never become law.

New recommendations by the Federal Reserve Board are a crucial step in the direction of much-needed restructuring of the U.S. financial sector.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Blame game: Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and CFO John Shrewsberry both tried to deflect blame for the company's phony accounts scandal. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Stumpf "appeared to lay blame for the problems with the employees involved than with any flaw in Wells Fargo's systems or culture."

Nearly a year after the October 2015 liability shift, a mere 17% to 37% of all US merchants have adopted EMV POS terminals.