PayThink

Strong opinions abound on the future of bank branches. Will branches be relevant 10 years from now? Will financial technology solutions be able to significantly disrupt the business of banking such that branches, at least as we know them today, become obsolete?

Little has been done to buoy confidence that an economic recovery is at hand. A settlement of the investigations surrounding last year’s robo-signing scandal that, among other things, achieves widespread principal reduction commitments from major servicers, could change that — but only if done carefully.

The banking industry is reeling from a slowdown in the economy that could last years and layoffs in this industry will be severe. Bank of America leads the list with announcing that it will lay off 10,000 employees and UBS is geared to lay off 3,500, however, this round of layoffs will touch not only the large banks, but also community and regional banks.

One of my mantras over the past few years has been that as our industry becomes more technology-driven and our products and services more commoditized, our people become more important, not less.

It all seemed so simple. The cause of the financial crisis was that private label securitizers of subprime mortgage loans weren't required to "have enough skin in the game," so Dodd-Frank would require them to retain 5% of the risk.

The "hacktivist" group Anonymous has been a bane for many financial companies, but a boon for one company's financials. Its choice of a Guy Fawkes mask as its logo has been profitable for Time Warner, which owns the rights to the image.

Remember that fuss about the dire danger of having an unknowable but evidently substantial number of banks that are Too Big to Fail? The message was: "Stop that!"

In the Washington Post last week, housing columnist Kenneth Harney took an interesting look at mortgage loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A prepaid card breach disclosed in May was accomplished by hackers who turned off the withdrawal limits on multiple card accounts, according to a new report.

Twenty years ago I engineered the sale of Security Pacific Bank, at the time the nation's fifth largest bank, to Bank of America. On August 12, 1991, the day the deal was announced BofA's stock closed at $10.00. Today it closed at $7.65 a decline of 23% over the past two decades.