PayThink

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent decision to make it more difficult to see customer complaint narratives is depriving the financial services industry of a vital source of business intelligence.

An FDIC plan to help community banks evaluate potential fintech partners is valuable, as far as it goes. But it cannot account for the unique and specific risks that arise when two companies operate in partnership.

In the age of artificial intelligence and digitization, banks run the risk of looking homogenous. The differentiator will always be the willingness of bankers to work to engage with customers and communities.

Recent federal guidance stopped short of issuing rules for banks' artificial intelligence use, but bank examiners already have some tools they can deploy to make sure these systems operate safely.

Crypto is entering its "institutional era" as tokenized assets and stablecoins gain wider adoptions. The trade-off is that only companies that offer real utility to established institutions in the market are likely to survive.

U.S. regulators have made it clear that banks have the discretion to explain account closures, short of disclosing the existence of a suspicious activity report filing. They should make it mandatory.

Credit unions have long led banks on traditional customer service metrics, but they are currently struggling to match banks' digital service scores. The answer may be deeper collaboration with fintech partners.

Looking past the headline numbers, there are reasons to be concerned about the condition of the U.S. economy. Particularly troubling is the fact that large numbers of Americans live financially precarious lives.

Bankers need to understand that artificial intelligence services are increasingly used by customers shopping for banking services. The chatbots can be pretty unsparing in their assessments.