PayThink

The GSEs are the essence of highly leveraged, systemically important financial institutions, based on their size, interconnectedness and the lack of substitutability

Scrapping the "call-center-as-a-machine" model and the "customer-as-widget" mentality will allow organizations to make real progress in the battle for customer experience.

December’s breaches made the most headlines, but the bad news for retailers seems to keep coming every few days, alternating with the latest weather reports to make up a good chunk of every evening newscast.

Eliminating payday lenders would create a void that banks, thrifts, and credit unions cannot or are reluctant to fill. With greater transparency, payday lenders can become a viable partner in the small-cash market.

This "product" is weakened in the customers' mind when interacting with a living, breathing banker inevitably involves fending off sales pitches.

Every year, the tech industry puts out sophisticated April Fools' Day pranks designed to look too outlandish to be real. But technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that one person's joke is another person's next big product.

Small banks' increased compliance costs could lead to fewer relationship managers, streamlined service models and increased costs of credit. As such, many small business and middle-market customers may simply choose to take their business elsewhere.

To make the process fairer to small banks, regulators should issue community bank summaries during the proposal stage, not when releasing final rules. They also should do more outreach to small banks and extend comment periods on major rules, writes the ABA's Hugh Carney.

Digital person-to-person payments, also known as social payments, have proliferated in the last few years, with the often-heard promise of providing an easier and faster way to split the dinner check.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.