ABA Banking Journal Podcast

First Horizon Bank is a growing regional bank that spans the nation's fastest-growing population centers, from Texas to Tennessee to Florida. How does that expanding retail franchise meet consumers' digital needs? On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by Agri-Access — First Horizon's head of consumer and small business banking Shaun McDougall discusses:

• How consumer expectations have changed — where they expect seamless digital experiences and where they still value human interaction and guidance.
• How AI tools are empowering bankers at First Horizon to engage customers with the right resources at the right time.
• The role of the physical bank branch in First Horizon's footprint.
• What consumer banking operations can learn from small business banking, and vice versa.

John Maxfield has spent 16 studying banking leadership and performance, first at The Motley Fool, then at Bank Director magazine and more recently on his own, creating videos and visuals to tell the story of community banks in new and creative ways (including with drones).

On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Maxfield discusses:

• His own family origins in agriculture and banking
• What he's learned from interviewing and shadowing community bank leaders and investors across the country
• What it takes to be a discipline to be a CEO in a business with little margin for error, especially when short-term incentives run the other way.

"Leadership is a skill you have to develop and maintain over time," says Velera Wilson. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, leadership keynote speaker Wilson discusses key practices of leadership development for both current and future bank leaders. Among other topics, she covers:

• How emerging leaders can help themselves succeed in the transition from high-performing individual contributors to high-performing leaders.
• The delicate balance between coaching and hands-on management.
• Why poor-performing leaders can spread weak leadership throughout organizations.
• Tips for identifying and managing the pipeline of leadership.

Wilson will keynote the Emerging Leaders Program at ABA's Annual Convention, Oct. 25-27 in Salt Lake city.

As the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — returning for its ninth season — brings you conversations with two financial industry professionals to help illuminate the impact 9/11 had on bankers, the financial system and the whole nation.

ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols was a senior Treasury Department official on 9/11, and he recounts being sent to a secure bunker in the White House complex with Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials. At Treasury, Nichols had a front-row seat to how the financial system was rewired in the months after 9/11 to stop flows of funds to terrorists and their sponsors.

Beth Chunn, a regular contributor to the ABA Banking Journal, was working for Morgan Stanley in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Building on her article in the latest issue of the Banking Journal, Chunn recounts what it was like to be in the World Trade Center that day, to evacuate from the building and from Manhattan.

For many banks, their strategic priorities include enhancing their digital capabilities to improve the client experience and investing in advanced technologies like AI to improve automation and operational efficiencies. If there is one process within banks that has changed the least while everything around it has changed the most, it is audit confirmations. Over time, the process moved from stacks of paper and certified mail to email threads with PDFs attached, to today's patchwork of portals and point solutions. On the surface, that looks like progress. In practice, most banks have simply moved the same manual, disconnected process onto a screen. That distinction matters more than it might seem, because it's the root of a conversation happening in bank operations, audit, and compliance departments right now: are we actually digital, or have we just digitized the paperwork?

The ability to pay college athletes has led to dramatic upheaval in banking college sports. Revenue-sharing with athletes has required big increases in spending that colleges may not have been counting on, just to be competitive. Meanwhile, the revenue shares and name, image and likeness marketing is putting big money in the hands of athletes who need extra support to handle it. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Q2 Software — Charles Frazier, head of the entertainment and sports banking unit at City National Bank, talks about how his team supports both colleges and athletes amid these changes. He also discusses athletes' need for holistic financial and business advice, the need for financial literacy and the growing need of college athletics programs for balance sheet solutions to help them stay competitive.

• Read a Q&A with Frazier in the latest issue of the ABA Banking Journal.

Virtually all banks engage in strategic planning, but how do they ensure the strategic plan actually drives performance and doesn't just get left in a binder on the shelf? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Q2 Software — Exchange Bank's Kevin Bender discusses tactics for making strategic planning a process that engages employees and board members in the future of the bank, drives prioritization of scarce resources and identifies each bank's biggest opportunities.

Bender will join Joseph Cady to discuss six components for every bank's strategic plan at the ABA Annual Convention, Oct. 25-27 in Salt Lake City. Early-bird registration ends on July 31.

What kind of difference can a single ratio make? In a new ABA DataBank essay, ABA's Patrick Mitchell and Brittany Kleinpaste discuss the FDIC's 2% Designated Reserve Ratio target for the Deposit Insurance Fund. This target — established by statute but set at the FDIC's discretion — is a level higher than the DIF's Minimum Reserve Ratio of 1.35%, and it has been 2% since it was first established in 2010.

On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Q2 Software — Mitchell and Kleinpaste discuss the simulations that were used to set the ratio 16 years ago and why it might be time for the FDIC to revisit them. Incorporating data going back to the savings and loan crisis, the simulation is not based on the most current data. It also relied on banks' provisioning data amid the post-financial crisis fallout without taking into account the lower ultimate cost of bank failures. Ultimately, an up-to-date simulation incorporating more current data may allow the FDIC to meet its goals of covering the industry with a different ratio.

• Read Mitchell and Kleinpaste's essay and a related technical analysis.

On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Q2 Software — ABA economist Dan Brown discusses the recent release of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data for 2025. He examines several trends, including the varying composition of bank mortgage loans in different regions, where banks face the stiffest nonbank competition in the mortgage market, a recent rebound in refinancings and a growing generation gap in homebuying activity.

To mark the 250th anniversary of Independence Day this week, this classic replay episode of the ABA Banking Journal — sponsored by Q2 Software — explores the role of banking and finance in the American Revolution and the founding era. John Steele Gordon is an acclaimed economic historian whose books include Hamilton's Blessing, The Great Game and An Empire of Wealth; he is also the ABA Banking Journal's "From the Vault" columnist. In this episode, Gordon discusses:

• How not having any chartered banks prior to 1782 put the United States at a disadvantage during the Revolution.
• Conversely, how the Bank of England was a "secret weapon" for Britain during the war.
• The role of patriotic financiers like Robert Morris in achieving U.S. victory.
• The debates over a central bank in the post-revolutionary period and how they contributed to the development of the Constitution.