PayThink

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can still manage their risk exposure even after reducing or eliminating "loan level price adjustment" fees.

Despite being limited to 20 – 25 characters (including spaces), the purchase descriptor in a card statement is the best means by which an issuing bank and merchant can convince a cardholder that he or she has actually made the purchase and reduce chargebacks. In a world where many of us are challenged to communicate in 140 characters or less, 20-25 presents a true test.

Wells Fargo has worked toward achieving gender diversity internally, now it's courting women-owned businesses. Sallie Krawcheck says if organizations wanted to fix the gender pay gap, they could — easily. Meanwhile in Silicon Valley, the majors are promising to pay their male and female employees equally, and Accenture finds women on boards are twice as likely to have the right technology experience for a company as their male counterparts.

The inconsistency between what millennials say on surveys and their actual behavior should make bank marketers skeptical about building programs around such research.

The suggestion that any area has too many local institutions dismisses the importance of community banks and overlooks the dangerous effects of consolidation.

Approximately 37 million adults in the United States — a number roughly equivalent to the population of California — do not have a checking account. Some of those individuals have never relied on traditional banking.

Industry fears about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's "UDAAP" authority recall steps Congress took in the '70s to rein in the Federal Trade Commission.

The challenges of running a business become exponentially greater when managers seem to be spending more and more of their time finding and training new team members than in actually executing strategy.

While biometric authentication has garnered significant attention in recent months, its actual application in face-to-face environments has seen slow adoption to date.

Banks and regulators both deserve credit for how they have navigated the post-crisis period, but how regulators continue to implement rules — and how banks continue to deal with this environment — will determine if this is a turning point for finance or the prelude to another round of pain.