Legislators and regulators are strongly focused on policy related to payment stablecoins, most recently with the passage of the Genius Act in the Senate Banking Committee. On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by nCino — ABA’s Brooke Ybarra and Kirsten Sutton discuss the current policy and technology landscape on stablecoins. Among other topics, they talk about:

• How stablecoins work and why people are interested in this kind of digital asset.
• Use cases for payment stablecoins, such as cross-border payments.
• Challenges that stablecoins may pose for today’s anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act framework.
• The outlook in Congress for the Stable Act in the House and the Genius Act in the Senate and what these bills would do.
• Key principles for thinking about stablecoins, including economic effects, disintermediation of financial institutions, regulatory arbitrage and consumer protection.
• How ABA is engaging on Capitol Hill and with regulatory agencies on stablecoin issues.

The big story of check fraud is not only its vast cost to the country and to individual victims, but simply the remarkable rate at which it is increasing. On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by nCino — we bring you a conversation from the ABA Fraudcast with ABA’s Paul Benda and Caitlin Piasecki of the United States Postal Inspection Service the enormous scale and challenge of addressing mail theft, a common venue for criminals to access paper checks.

Piasecki describes how the internet serves as a perfect sharing and recruiting platform for criminals aiming to get their hands on as many paper checks as possible. Encrypted platforms are where criminal organizations in New Jersey can easily connect with those operating in Los Angeles, she notes. “We have seen a huge influx in the complex nature these investigations have taken, where previously it was a local group in a local area,” she says.

A century ago, in March 1925, Charles G. Dawes was sworn in as vice president of the United States. Being elected vice president of the United States — as Dawes was, alongside Calvin Coolidge, in a landslide — is usually a career pinnacle for an American politician, but Dawes’ vice presidency turned out to be more of a footnote in his eventful life. In the second part of this two-part podcast series — presented by nCino — Dawes biographer Annette Dunlap explores Dawes’ service as head of logistics for the American Expeditionary Force in World War I (an organizational feat never before pulled off in American military history), his work in international diplomacy during the 1920s, his vice presidency under Calvin Coolidge and how he engineered a bailout for his troubled bank in the throes of the Great Depression.

A century ago, in March 1925, Charles G. Dawes was sworn in as vice president of the United States. Being elected vice president of the United States — as Dawes was, alongside Calvin Coolidge, in a landslide — is usually a career pinnacle for an American politician, but Dawes’ vice presidency turned out to be more of a footnote in his eventful life. In the first part of this two-part podcast series — presented by R&T Deposit Solutions — Dawes biographer Annette Dunlap walks listeners through Dawes’ early life, his big ideas in banking and his service as comptroller of the currency, and how he built up Chicago as a regional banking center. At this centennial moment, and in this 150th anniversary year for ABA, it’s worth reflecting on the fascinating and complex life of Charley Dawes.

In rural southeastern New Mexico, bank CEO and varsity bowling coach Ken Clayton often takes his team on 500-mile one-day roundtrips for bowling tournaments. For Clayton, that commitment to going the distance is also what community banking is about. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by R&T Deposit Solutions — Clayton discusses what makes community banks like his tick.

And as chair of ABA’s Government Relations Council, he also talks about ABA’s legislative and regulatory priorities for the year ahead, including tax reform and Subchapter S, regulatory challenges like the Section 1071 final rule, the SAFER Banking Act, credit card interchange policy and more. For Clayton’s 22-employee bank, policy challenges hit home in a challenging way since he and his CFO also share duties as the bank’s compliance officers. “As a banker, don’t just sit at home and say, ‘Gee, I wish this was different,'” Clayton says. “Get involved. It’s very rewarding, not to mention that it helps your customer and it helps your community.”

Clayton also discusses his own career journey in banking, his home community of Artesia and his approach to developing leaders within his bank.

• Read the ABA Blueprint for Growth.
• Register for the Washington Summit.

A recent article in the New York Times — “Love and Money: Why Sharing Accounts Is Good for Your Relationship” — explores scholarly evidence for the benefits of couples’ combining their bank accounts. The article features the insights of Indiana University marketing professor Jenny Olson, who appeared in 2023 on the ABA Banking Journal Podcast. For a special Valentine’s Day episode, we bring back that classic podcast episode — sponsored by R&T Deposit Solutions — in which Olson discusses her research on joint accounts and couples’ well-being.

Olson and her colleagues randomly assigned new couples to one of three conditions for a two-year period: using only separate accounts, using a joint account only or to a third group that received no instructions about the kind of accounts to use. Couples in the no-instruction group and the separate account group saw declines in relationship quality during the experiment, couples with joint accounts were “buffered” against the declines otherwise expected, she says.

“Because we randomly assigned couples, we can take better steps toward understanding causality,” Olson says. “Our results really do suggest that having a joint bank account improves relationship quality.” While every couple’s financial needs are unique and separate accounts may be what’s needed in many situations, Olson discusses implications of the research for how bankers and wealth managers approach financial planning conversations with clients.

• Read the paper by Olson et al. in the Journal of Consumer Research.

This episode is presented by R&T Deposit Solutions.

On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by R&T Deposit Solutions — ABA’s Jeff Huther and Sharon Whitaker rebut a false narrative about how banks are managing commercial real estate credit risk. Expanding on a rebuttal to a New York Fed paper, they explore why measures of distress and undercapitalization used by the New York Fed and some in the media are inconsistent with common definitions and ignore bank-borrower relationships, accounting principles and valuation techniques.

“We’re now almost three years past the last shock to the sector, and people have had a lot of time to kind of think through how to deal with this and what the implications are for credit risk,” says Huther. “We’re in a situation where ” extending and pretending” is just not the right way to describe the condition and market.”

• Read the ABA DataBank post.

Today's episode features a crossover from ABA's brand new podcast series: ABA Fraudcast: Cyber and Fraud with Paul Benda. Community banks can be targets of large-scale fraud, just like larger banks. On the inaugural episode of the ABA Fraudcast, former ABA Chair Dan Robb, president and CEO of Jonesburg State Bank in Missouri, describes the recent targeting of his bank by fraudsters who texted thousands of residents of his community, seeking access to customer accounts. What followed for Robb and his team were fast lessons on all the areas his bank was prepared for, and a few challenges that were surprising. “We are no longer dealing with a mom-and-pop criminal,” says ABA’s Paul Benda, Fraudcast host. “This is institutional crime.”

To find the ABA Fraudcast, visit aba.com/fraudcast or look for it in your favorite podcast app.

From AI and crypto to complex regulatory challenges and increasingly diverse markets, bank executives face increasingly complex strategic decisions — and so do bank boards as they set and oversee the strategic direction for their banks. And yet, the average age of bank directors is 76, and many do not have expertise in these critical challenges affecting banks.

On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, veteran bank board members and executives Jenn Docherty and Virginia Varela discuss how bank boards can position their banks for success in a challenging environment. They discuss the importance of sourcing diverse expertise and how board members can start and lead difficult conversations about where their banks need to go, creating space for new ideas and giving management more flexibility  — and more incentives — to innovate.

Docherty and Varela will discuss these topics and more at the ABA Conference for Community Bankers, Feb. 16-18 in Phoenix.

In this holiday bonus episode — sponsored by TransUnion — host Evan Sparks digs into the Banking Journal archives to learn more about the “Christmas Club” savings vehicle, and what this financial product says about human psychology and behavioral economics.

This episode is presented by TransUnion.