BankThink submission guidelines

BankThink is the place to discuss ideas, trends, public policy and other developments in financial services. The section is a popular platform for policymakers, top banking officials and other industry experts to weigh in on important subjects.

Please send submissions to BankThink@Arizent.com. Submissions sent to individual editors will not be considered.

If a piece is urgent, please put that in the subject line.

We welcome and encourage submissions that take a strong point of view. Please read these guidelines carefully before submitting.

We value opinion-driven pieces over advice-driven ones. We will consider advice pieces, but they should be geared toward advice for the financial services industry rather than a broad consumer audience. Broad explainers or context-setting pieces don’t tend to be a good fit. In all cases, the author must make an argument and back it up. The topics and styles of BankThink posts are diverse and we strongly recommend reviewing some of our recently published material to get a sense for what works.

We do not accept explicit or veiled promotional pieces. The conclusion should not lead to a recommendation for a specific category of product or service, especially if the author (or a company the author represents) sells these products or services. This is not a home for content marketing. Pieces that are promotional in nature will be rejected without further consideration.

Any potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed up front, at the time submission, including any financial ties between an author and any company he or she is writing about. Failure to do so may be grounds for retraction.

A submission cannot be fully considered until it is in draft written form. Contributors may send abstracts, but we prefer the full version.

Please be patient for a response and do not send follow-up emails to individual editors. All pieces must go to the submissions box to be considered and all correspondence should take place through the submissions box except at the direction of an editor. While we strive to consider all submissions, some contributors may not hear back due to the volume of submissions received. We work to provide limited feedback to authors in some cases but unfortunately are not able to do this with everyone. It may take us up to five business days to provide a response. If you have not heard back, please feel free to offer the piece elsewhere after that time.

Submissions should be exclusive to us. Authors must be willing to grant rights to American Banker and all other publications owned by Arizent. If you would like to excerpt or adapt material that has appeared, or will appear, in another form, please discuss it with us.

Headlines for BankThink posts are written by American Banker’s editorial staff. We work to make each headline an accurate reflection of the piece. Suggested headlines are encouraged.

Please provide online links to source materials and other related web content whenever relevant — footnotes are not permitted. Include any important attributions/citations within the text. Send articles as text. PDF files will be returned to the author for reformatting. Avoid fancy formatting: no charts or bulleted/numerical lists. Bulleted lists may also be returned to the author for reformatting.

Please try to keep submissions to less than 1000 words. We reserve the right to trim longer pieces.

Avoid jargon. Though our audience is familiar with many technical topics, we strive to use language that is clear and accessible to the layperson. Don't refer to software as "solutions," don't use the term "holistic" unless referring to spa treatments.

Firsthand, first-person observations and anecdotes are welcomed and encouraged when appropriate, though we strive to avoid use of second-person pronouns (i.e. “you” or “we” when referring to the industry at large) in most cases. We value the variety of our contributors’ backgrounds.

Once a piece is edited, you may be asked to approve it for publication by an expedited deadline. In most cases deadlines are rolling, but if an article is relevant to breaking news, please get it to us as soon as possible.

Please include a short bio, including the author(s) title and a very brief description of his or her company/organization. You may also add the author’s Twitter handle. Submissions should include a high-resolution digital color photo of the author, if available.

Thanks for reviewing these guidelines. We look forward to working with you.