PayThink

The Texas Ratio is often used to measure the riskiness of a bank and its likelihood of failure. But recently, it has lost its distinctiveness as being uniquely Texan.

If you have a data breach, get ready for a lawsuit — just over half of American consumers said in a survey that they would sue a company that exposes their sensitive information.

Banks and financial institutions have been sitting on vast amounts of customer transaction data for several decades now. The hardware and software technologies to make sense of this vast storehouse of data have been available for at least a decade now. Meanwhile the appetite for insightful data to help marketers target customers online has grown enormously, as has users' disdain for untargeted advertising.

Higher account maintenance fees are inevitable, because basic, relatively low-balance checking accounts are simply not profitable on their own.

Bank of America is running television ads depicting a son telling the story of how family loyalty to the bank is based on his parents approaching their local B of A branch manager some 71 years ago to finance selling hot dogs from their stand on a local corner. The piece notes that the parents offered no collateral but gained the confidence of the local manager of their potential success. This story is consistent with the history of the bank going back to its founder, A.P. Giannini who consistently worked to meet the needs of small businesses in developing areas and during difficult times.

Changing your password on a regular basis can actually be bad for security. Part of the reason is that most passwords are compromised through phishing, so their freshness and complexity doesn't actually play a role in whether they are exposed.

I recently caught up with friends, colleagues, and customers at a large banking conference.

The attempt by large banks to impose debit card fees wasn't just about wringing a bit of extra revenue out of existing customers. It was an effort by Bank of America and its competitors to rework their basic retail account business model.

Turning stolen U.S. credit cards into cash is tough if you live in a country that U.S. businesses won't ship to. Fortunately for the bad guys, there are websites that focus on solving that very problem.

What's easy to forget a decade later is that Sept. 11 wasn't so much a day as an era; the panic and nervousness and uncertainty brought about by the terrorist attacks didn't just fade away as October 2011 rolled around. In the months following 9/11, I was reminded of how the concept of "standard operating procedures" became anything but in the final months of that year.