In|Vest 2018 Direct

Karen Monks is a Principal Analyst in Celent's North American insurance practice. She brings a broad range of insurance and consulting experience to her work; she has worked as a management consultant to and within insurance carriers and other financial services companies for over 25 years.

Karen's focus is life insurance technology and trends. Her research concentrates on life, all aspects of life insurance processing including illustrations, eApplications and eSignature, new business and underwriting systems, policy administration systems, claims systems, and digital enablement technologies. Her consulting experience at Celent includes new business and underwriting system selections, policy administration system selections, distribution management system selections, vendor product strategy reviews, a life claims system benchmarking project, eApplication and automated underwriting cost analyses, plus several small life insurance technology analyses. Karen led Celent's Knowledge Management team for seven years. The KMC supports Celent's vendor assessments across all practices and helps manage vendor data on Celent's online platform, VendorMatch. She helped build out Celent's VendorMatch Digital Services Platform.

The FDIC board debated and ultimately withdrew two separate proposals to address asset managers' control over banks, but acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu said he couldn't support either and called for more research and debate about how asset managers' control over banks impacts safety and soundness.

The state's comptroller of public accounts is one of several notable non-depositories with access to the Fed's payments system, along with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Tennessee Valley Authority. So why do they have accounts while some neobanks don't? 

Mortgage rates rose 7 basis points this week, Freddie Mac said, and more increases are likely following a weaker than expected gross domestic product report.

Shares of the Raleigh, North Carolina bank, which bought Silicon Valley Bank last year, rose 7.8% on Thursday morning.

While home lenders are seeing a decrease in issues coming through mobile channels, phone fraud spiked last year, accounting for 28% of losses, a new report found.

Recent economic data have shown inflation stubbornly above the Fed's 2% target, putting rate cuts in jeopardy. Lauren Saidel-Baker, an economist with ITR Economics, parses the FOMC meeting, Chair Powell's press conference and takes a look at future policy.

The Federal Reserve's new proposal to lower the cap on debit card fees will drive up the prices consumers pay for other services, while forcing some banks out of the market entirely.

The Jackson, Mississippi, company will use proceeds from the sale of its Fisher Brown Bottrell Insurance unit to restructure its investment portfolio, moving $1.6 billion of low-yield securities off the balance sheet.

The store-branded card issuer is raising annual percentage rates and adding fees for paper statements to compensate for lost revenue. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new regulation is scheduled to take effect on May 14.