Since Internet banking took hold the idea of the branch bank going the way of the paper ledger has been a topic of much discourse in the industry.
The discourse continues now that mobile banking — banking by smartphone and tablet — is all the rage and continues to grow as more banks take advantage of the technology.
As this Northwestern Financial Review post points out, the industry has added 20,000 more branches in the past decade.
Then again, all you have to do is take a look at the biggest consumer bank in the country and wonder aloud if branch banking is on its last leg. Just about every week for the past year or more, Bank of America has been shedding multiple branches across the country as it looks to become more efficient and shrink its branch network by 10 percent. The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, by the way, has typically been the first to adapt to new means of delivering banking services, including mobile banking.
And as the population of bank customers who prefer online banking grows and matures, you can’t help but think there is a tipping point at which the branch office will be considered an outdated concept. Maintaining branch buildings and employing people to staff them is much more expensive compared with maintaining computer networks and technology that isn’t as staff intensive.
The Financial Times reported that three of the country’s biggest banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — are pursuing the administration of corporate 401(k) plans for new income.
The Times report says while it may not represent lots of new income, it does represent a steady source of it.
These banks, some of which are often referred to as “money center banks” or “too-big-to-fail” banks, have been looking for ways to recapture fee income they lost as the result of new regulations from the Federal Reserve and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Sheila Bair’s departure last year as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does not mean all of Kansas’ connection to the headquarters of the powerful bank regulator are completely severed.
On Thursday the Senate approved the nomination of Thomas Hoenig to the FDIC’s board of directors. Hoenig also awaits Senate confirmation as vice chairman of the regulator that administers the deposit insurance fund.
Hoenig was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City for 20 years and retired last October. The Iowa-born economist was a frequent visitor to Wichita during his tenure.
Bair, who was raised in Independence and attended the University of Kansas, was chairman of the FDIC during one of the industry’s most turbulent periods, the 2008 financial crisis.
Usually, a regional Federal Reserve Bank annual report is routine reading. Some might even say they are boring.
That isn’t the case for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ annual report for 2011.
The title of the report alone clearly suggests why: “Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too Big to Fail — Now.”
In his letter in the report, Dallas Fed President Richard W. Fisher writes, “The too-big-to-fail institutions that amplified and prolonged the recent financial crisis remain a hindrance to full economic recovery and to the very ideal of American capitalism. It is imperative that we end TBTF.”
And it’s been the subject of a few media reports, including this one on the New York Times’ website.
Low interest rates mean smaller interest payments for American households, according to a USA Today analysis.
The report says the average household is saving $3,100 a year because of lower interest rates.
Such payments haven’t been that low in 34 years, the report says.
Computer software giant Microsoft, with the help of the Feds and the RICO Act, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, was successful late last week in thwarting part of a network of cyber criminals using botnets to steal from online banking networks.
A USA Today report said Microsoft was aided in its efforts by U.S. Marshals and two financial services industry trade groups.
Let’s face it. Banks have never liked the fact that credit unions can operate in a lot of the same ways they can yet escape some of the taxation that credit unions’ non-profit, cooperative status affords them.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that powerful banking lobbies — i.e., the American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America — are trying to thwart legislation in the Senate that would raise credit unions’ lending cap to businesses.
Whether the bankers are successful is not the point. What is the point is that as long as there are credit unions and banks, there always will be tension. Unless, of course, credit unions lose their tax advantage.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley’s co-head of North American fixed-income capital markets is expected to make a court appearance Thursday on charges that he stabbed a New York City cabbie.
William Bryan Jennings was charged with a hate crime earlier this month after allegedly stabbing the cab driver, who drove Jennings from New York to his Connecticut home. Reports say Jennings also refused to pay the fare.
According to an industry report, Morgan Stanley has placed the executive on leave.
It’s not the first time someone has called for the break up of a too-big-to-fail bank.
But Public Citizen is calling for people to sign a petition aiming to do just that to Bank of America.
The Ralph Nader-led group also has produced a music video on the action set to the song, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.”
Here’s the video
Stock news website TheStreet.com is lauding Commerce Bancshares today, the Kansas City, Mo.-based holding company of Commerce Bank.
TheStreet is featuring Commerce on its website today as its “Best in Class Business.”
Among other accolades, TheStreet says Commerce “has been remarkably stable through the credit crisis.”
You can read more here.
A year after Citizens Bank of Kansas acquired the Medicine Lodge, Pratt and Isabel branches of SolutionsBank, customers in those towns got a surprise.
They received a letter from Fayetteville, Ark.-based Arvest Bank about its acquisition of SolutionsBank’s six Kansas City area branches, after the Kansas bank commissioner closed SolutionsBank on Dec. 11.
The letter was apparently sent to all former SolutionsBank customers, including the ones picked up a year earlier in CBOK’s branch acquisition.
“We are happy to be with Citizens Bank of Kansas, and our customers should disregard the letter from Arvest Bank,” said Steve Bryan, market president for CBOK, in a press release this week.
I just this morning received a nifty little packet — what we in the newspaper business call a press kit — from FedEx Ground.
The packet touts the virtues of the FedEx Ground system and how that system allows nearly 13,000 people to be independent business owners working as contractors to FedEx.
What’s most interesting about this is not necessarily the packet, but how it came to me.
It was by way of the U.S. Postal Service’s Priority Mail.