The U.S. is experiencing a massive demographic shift driven by the aging Baby Boom generation, declining birth rates and shifts in immigration trends. What effect will aging have on the banking outlook? In the season finale of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, ABA economist JP Rothenberg discusses how America’s aging population:

• Shifts balance sheet management strategies with a surplus of stable deposits by weaker localized loan demand.
• May increasingly push banks into new markets to drive loan growth, which further accelerates consolidation.
• Magnifies credit risk during downturns in the tail of the risk profile
• Increases opportunities for personalized wealth management solutions and expands the growth prospects of senior-serving business sectors.

Alongside the commercial and consumer markets, institutional banking is one of three strategic pillars of $70 billion-asset UMB Bank. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, UMB’s Phil Mason discusses:

• How institutional banking — which includes capital markets, corporate trust, custody and health savings accounts — fits into the business model of the Kansas City, Missouri-based bank and helps extend its footprint coast-to-coast.
• Investments in technology to support the growth of institutional banking.
• The recent expansion in HSA eligibility and how UMB Bank uses the product to engage both business clients and consumers.
• How UMB sources the right mix of talent — particularly from within — to support the diverse and individualized needs of its institutional clients.

What does the future hold for bank risk and compliance professionals? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Krysti Cunningham of Security National Bank in Omaha, Nebraska — and winner of the 2025 Distinguished Service Award for Risk and Compliance — discusses:

• The technological transformation in risk and compliance at community and midsize banks.
• How technological change is driving the industry toward specialization.
• Applications for AI tools and LLMs in risk and compliance — and how to manage risks associated with this transformation.
• The importance of constant learning as a risk and compliance professional.

Following the enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, hear from ABA experts on how key ABA-supported provisions on tax policy, rural real estate and health savings accounts in the budget reconciliation law will affect banks. Experts also discuss what to expect next in terms of implementation.

• Click here to download the episode if you can’t see the player above.
• View a members-only staff analysis

ABA’s new online platform to provide members with free access to the Treasury Check Verification System is now live. On a special joint episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast and ABA Fraudcast — presented by Intrafi’s Banking with Interest podcast — ABA anti-fraud experts Paul Benda and Hannah Ibberson discuss the platform and how banks can put it to use. Among other topics, Benda and Ibberson discuss:

• The scale of physical U.S. Treasury checks and why they remained a potential vector for fraud
• How and why ABA developed the platform
• How ABA member bank employees — including frontline staff — can access the portal to verify a payee
• Ways this new platform fits into ABA’s overall anti-fraud initiatives

• Click here to download the episode if you can’t see the player above.
• Access the TCVS portal (ABA bank members only)

Amid tariff-related volatility, how are small and midsize businesses and the banks that serve them faring? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by Intrafi’s Banking with Interest podcast — John Buran, the president and CEO of Queens-based Flushing Financial discusses how tariff and trade policy-related volatility has compounded commercial client uncertainty based on interest rates over recent months and why uncertainty has slowed loan growth and investment.

However, Buran also notes that lending has improved in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, “possibly associated with the Fed keeping rates stable since the middle of the middle of last year. So I think that has helped somewhat. Banks are staying very close to their customers . . . so that they can come out the on other side in a favorable position.”

Buran also discusses opportunities for community banks to gain market share in the New York City metro area real estate market and the potential for regulatory change under newly confirmed Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman.

Jim Ryan has led Old National Bank through a massive wave of growth — through major mergers and organic growth, the Evansville, Indiana-based bank has reached $70 billion in assets and a footprint that extends from Minnesota to Tennessee. The bank has grown by 250% since Ryan moved into the CEO role in 2019. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by Intrafi’s Banking with Interest podcast — Ryan discusses:

• The bank’s growing profile, including its new marketing partnership with the on-fire Indiana Fever.
• Why the bank remains committed to its hometown of Evansville, even as it grows into a more expansive regional bank.
• His views on deposit insurance reform and areas other areas of focus as chair of the American Bankers Council, ABA’s peer group for midsize bank CEOs.

Ryan also discusses the experience of leading Old National through the devastating mass shooting at a Louisville, Kentucky, bank branch in 2023 — a tragedy that claimed the lives of 5 victims, all of them bank employees. “We always felt like we were a family, but that definition of family was completely reinforced,” he says. “After you go through a tragedy like that, it takes a lot of love, it takes a lot of support, and it takes a lot of care.”

So-called “First Amendment auditors” have long filmed themselves trying to provoke police and other public officials into stopping them from recording in public settings. Now, some auditors are targeting banks, filming for hours outside bank branches and seeking to goad bank employees into calling law enforcement. The latest episode — presented by Intrafi’s Banking with Interest podcast — features tips from bankers and security professionals on how to handle a First Amendment auditor at a bank location while protecting bank employees and customers.

• Read more in the ABA Banking Journal.
• Access tips from ABA’s Bank Security Committee.

As independently owned and operated small businesses, fast-food restaurant franchisees have unique business needs. They have mobile and often part-time workforces, complex inventory management and the constant challenge of managing both a small business and being the face of a major brand. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Bix2x — Wendell Bontrager talks about how Sonata Bank is working with this unique market segment.

For example, “we can come in at fractional costs to provide them things like telehealth, mobile phone insurance, pet insurance, in a way that is free to the employee but is done and sold through the franchisee,” says Bontrager. He outlines Sonata’s business of lending to “quick-service” restaurants, as they’re often called in the trade, paired with employee benefits, treasury management and a software-as-a-service platform for QSRs.

Bontrager also talks about the health of the Nashville, Tennessee, market where Sonata’s community bank franchise is headquartered and how the organization has been able to capture talent with hybrid and remote workplace offerings.

Government-guaranteed lending requires special expertise and back-office functionality that grows increasingly expensive for smaller banks. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Bix2x — Chris Hurn and Jeremy Gilpin of Community Bankshares, a bank holding company in La Grange, Georgia, discuss how they are tackling that challenge.

“To start one of these departments is very expensive for a lot of rural banks and credit unions,” says Gilpin, “It’s very prohibitive to enter the market space if you are a rural bank or even in an urban market where you do you know, maybe 5, 10, 20 of these loans a year.”

Hurn and Gilpin are part of a team that has built Community Bankshares, parent of Community Bank and Trust of West Georgia, into a network of Small Business Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture lending subsidiaries that work on a nationwide basis. They developed a model that allows the “the holding company [to] serve as a source of strength for the bank, not just the other way around, which is typical,” says Gilpin. Gilpin and Hurn discuss the company’s role as a white label lender, referral lender, participation partner or servicer for smaller banks that want to connect their clients to guaranteed loans and the strength of the bank model for supporting these businesses and agricultural enterprises.