American Banker Magazine - September 2020

Reputation Rebound

After dropping for the past two years, reputation scores are once again rising, thanks largely to the goodwill banks have earned by helping customers and employees weather the coronavirus outbreak.

The results of the American Banker/RepTrak Survey of Bank Reputations underscore the importance of communicating in a crisis.

Lexicon Bank in Las Vegas, whose chairman was a professional gambler, is actively courting poker players to open deposit accounts for their tournament winnings.

Many of its borrowers have struggled to make payments since the pandemic struck, so it is helping them by suspending debt collections and capping rates on new loans at 36%.

Community bank earnings are usually easy to understand, but loan deferrals and modifications as well as the complexities of the Paycheck Protection Program are skewing financial statements.

The regulation allows banks to add employees with past convictions for trivial crimes after the industry complained the prior rules were too severe.

Finding loan forgiveness programs and keep-the-change loan paydowns are examples of services startups like Savi, Summer and FutureFuel.io are offering banks to help borrowers manage their monthly payments.

The pioneering online lender had long struggled to live up to the hype that drove its early growth, even before the pandemic pushed it to the brink.

The owner of The Shuckery in Petaluma, Calif., says she was unable to get a Paycheck Protection Program loan until she responded to an email from the delivery service and BlueVine.

If it’s approved, the charter is expected to lower the fintech’s cost of funds and allow for more product offerings. It comes nearly three years after SoFi pulled the plug on an earlier effort to open an industrial bank.

Rho initially focused on startups, but now it’s targeting businesses with 100 or more employees.

Financial firms could lose access to data that’s critical to their businesses if Congress passes a privacy bill. To change lawmakers’ minds, they need to show how data in the right hands has the power to improve customers’ lives.