Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Financial industry reforms place too much emphasis on risk control systems, missing the importance of influencing people's behavior, says Stephen Platt, author of "Criminal Capital: How the Finance Industry Facilitates Crime." He also discusses why clawbacks of banker pay, bonus caps and large fines against institutions that fail to deter to reckless conduct.

Directors of financial institutions should be subject to professional certification standards like those for pilots or nurses, says Stephen Platt, author of "Criminal Capital: How the Finance Industry Facilitates Crime."

Rallying bank employees to participate in outreach projects takes hard work in the beginning, but their involvement is essential to building a rapport with the community, OneWest Bank CEO Joseph Otting says.

Banks need outside help to deliver credit to the underserved, says Tim Wennes, the West Coast president of MUFG Union Bank, who shares advice on what kind of partners to seek and how to vet them.

One way to help the global economy prosper is to think of the poor and the middle class as untapped assets for entrepreneurship and job creation. That was the premise underlying a panel discussion at a recent conference on financial inclusion.The panel included, from left, Clare Woodcraft-Scott, the chief executive of the Emirates Foundation; Monica Mehta, managing principal of Seventh Capital in Houston, a family office that invests in lower-market consumer businesses, and author of "The Entrepreneurial Instinct: How Everyone Has the Innate Ability to Start a Successful Small Business," and Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif. Their discussion took place in Atlanta at the 2015 Hope Global Forum, presented by Operation Hope.

Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif., says introducing young people to what's possible, so that they don't feel limited by their current circumstances, is a way of continuing the mission that Martin Luther King Jr. started. Brown was a featured speaker at the recent Hope Global Forum, which focused on the theme of financial inclusion. She was there to discuss several initiatives underway in Compton, including one with the University of Southern California to offer industry-specific employment training.

As you can guess from the title of his book, "BitCon: The Naked Truth About Bitcoin," author Jeffrey Robinson takes a caustic view of the Internet currency and payment system. He explains why he thinks Bitcoin's real-time, public ledger is insufficiently transparent for law enforcement in the first of three parts of a conversation with American Banker's Marc Hochstein.

Jeffrey Robinson is hardly a fan of Bitcoin (the title of his latest book, "BitCon," kind of gives it away.) But as the author of a classic 1990s book about money laundering, even he says that Bitcoin is a terrible tool for that particular crime, despite the digital currency's reputation. He explains why in the second part of a conversation with American Banker's Marc Hochstein.

Ultra-high-net-worth investors can have complex needs. That's why family historians and psychologists are on staff at Abbot Downing, the wealth-management business founded by Wells Fargo to serve investors with $50 million or more.

With sellers opting to take stock rather than cash, how the market values a buyer is important. Thomas Michaud, CEO of KBW, talks about his expectations for bank stocks this year and what those valuations mean for M&A.