Opinion News from American Banker

Bank trade groups should be content with the compromise hammered out in the Senate Banking Committee over the stablecoin yield ban in the CLARITY Act. Their push to defeat the bill could leave them worse off in the long run.

Plaid strikes a deal with OpenAI that would allow ChatGPT users to upload their bank-account data. Is that such a good idea?

New bank capital rules have changed the calculus for many banks in the U.S., eliminating many of the barriers that prevented midsize institutions from growing. The result will likely be a rapid spike in mergers.

Crypto firms are becoming the kinds of trusted third parties bitcoin was created to get around, raising the question of what digital currencies are even for.

In a perfect world, statutory certainty about the treatment of digital assets would be preferable to regulatory guidance. However, banks that put off their crypto plans while waiting for Congress to act risk falling behind their more aggressive competitors.

Recent news reports about the struggles of Blue Owl Capital raise real concerns about opaque private credit firms and the risks they may pose to the broader financial markets. The government needs the tools to gather more information.

Given new government rules on payment processing, giants like Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo would benefit immensely from acquiring proprietary debit card networks. Why they haven't done so already is a mystery.

Every business needs a competitive advantage. But for banks their core product, money, is by definition commoditized. So where do banks find an advantage?

Lawmakers are moving toward a compromise that would ban yield payments on stablecoins, but allow other rewards. The distinction is functionally meaningless, and leaves small banks in danger of losing deposits.

Financial institutions, regulators, and developers are aligning around a common goal of creating infrastructure that makes our global financial system faster, more efficient, and more secure.

There are a lot of worrisome things going on out there, but the credit markets overall appear to be okay. For now. And that, really, is all that matters.

Allowing clients to surrender or lapse life insurance policies before gauging value on the secondary market amounts to a fiduciary fail, argues Cole Hallman of Citizens Life Group.

Calls to replace proposed deposit insurance reforms with a revived Transaction Account Guarantee program would make the federal government's role in a bank run purely reactive. That would be a mistake.

The economy is already showing signs of stress from the oil crisis. How much longer will it last, and is there a red-line number that breaks the economy?

The cost of deposits has fallen but the trend may get short-circuited by a Fed that can't cut rates amid the inflationary pressures of the war in Iran.

Kevin Warsh is a younger version of Jay Powell but with a convincing economist "eminence front." What Warsh does not have, as was the case with Powell, is an economics Ph.D., and that, as the post-pandemic inflation surge has shown us, is critical.

The 21st century financial system that digital currency promised is being built, but by banks, not by the bitcoin crowd.

The revelation that Mythos, the latest version of Anthropic's Claude large language model, can unearth unknown vulnerabilities in computer systems and websites is a crisis moment, especially for community banks.

Interpretive guidance from regulators does not deliver the kind of certainty that companies want as they consider expanding into the world of digital assets. Congressional action on the CLARITY Act is the answer.

What do you get when you put two boring, safe industries together with one super-exciting, possibly dangerous industry? We're apparently going to find out.