ABA Banking Journal Podcast

Most bankers dread the thought of a core conversion, but once that decision is made, the process can open up new opportunities for strategic growth. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Webster Five CIO Kate Megraw discusses her bank’s conversion and what she learned. Among other topics, Megraw explains:

• How a new core met the business strategy needs of Massachusetts-based Webster Five.
• The process of developing an RFP, exploring models and working with a core selection consultant.
• The role of commercial client growth in driving the need for a new core platform.
• Challenges and successes experienced in the conversion process.

Megraw will join fellow Core Platforms Committee members to discuss conversions at the ABA Annual Convention, Oct. 27-29 in New York City.

As chief corporate responsibility officer for Webster Bank, Marissa Weidner works across the bank’s footprints and business lines to help advance the bank’s goals of financial empowerment. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Weidner discusses the many dimensions of how this takes shape at the northeastern regional bank. Among other topics, she explores:

• Webster’s focus on access to capital for small businesses, including those owned by minorities and women.
• How Webster designed its special-purpose credit program focused on homeownership.
• Webster’s innovative “finance labs,” built in partnership with local schools and nonprofit partners, to provide hands-on financial experience for young people from low-to-moderate-income areas.
• The role of Bank On accounts in Webster’s financial inclusion strategy.

Weidner also discusses her career journey — including experience in economic development, bank human resources and bank merger integration — that led her to her current role.

This episode is presented by Alkami.

Fraud is front and center for America’s banks, and on the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — ABA’s Paul Benda and Peter Cook discuss several recent initiatives taken by ABA to help banks tackle fraud from a variety of fronts.

• Benda discusses ABA’s recently expanded Fraud Contact Directory, which is free to all banks and now encompasses other forms of fraud to facilitate prompt claims.
• He also explores new tools banks are using to tackle rising fraud numbers.
• Meanwhile, Cook discusses the latest incarnation of ABA’s award-winning #BanksNeverAskThat anti-phishing campaign — returning for a fourth year in October and also free to all banks — and previews a new companion initiative, Practice Safe Checks, that educates consumers about how to avoid becoming unwitting victims of check fraud.

Earlier this week, VersaBank closed on its purchase of Stearns Bank Holdingford N.A., giving the Canadian point-of-sale lender a point of entry into the U.S. market. On the season eight premiere of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — VersaBank founder and CEO David Taylor discusses the bank’s growth plans in the United States.

Taylor also explores his career history in banking, the story of VersaBank as the first new bank to receive a license in Canada in 18 years, how the bank developed a deposit broker network in Canada, VersaBank’s point-of-sale lending strategy (and how it can acquire loans without any equity from the finance company), and VersaBank’s talent and culture.

This episode is presented by Alkami.

Consumers everywhere see and hear credit union marketing campaigns, from PenFed’s ubiquitous jingle to big stadium and Super Bowl sponsorship deals. In fact, according to a new ABA DataBank post from ABA’s Dan Brown and Robert Flock, credit unions spend more than double what comparable banks do on marketing as a percentage of net income.

But why do credit unions, which serve members from defined fields of membership, spend so much? On the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, Brown and Flock break down the legislative and regulatory history of fields of membership and how the average credit union has more than doubled its “potential membership” since new rules were finalized in 2015, using their taxpayer subsidy to fuel growth via marketing rather than lower rates and costs for their members.

At the midpoint of the year, what’s the M&A outlook like for community banks? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, ABA Banking Journal Contributing Editor Paul Davis discusses what he’s seeing with mergers and acquisitions and what to expect for the remainder of 2024.

Davis, the founder of the Bank Slate newsletter, also discusses what he’s hearing from banks about succession planning and talent and talks about budget forecasting, an area the Bank Slate is surveying bankers on for 2025.

On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, ABA economist Jeff Huther discusses recent dynamics with the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, the “world’s most important number.” Huther delves into topics in his his new ABA DataBank essay, exploring how quantitative tightening has pushed SOFR toward the upper end of the Federal Open Market Committee’s rate target range, the effects of monetary policy mechanisms like the Overnight Reverse Repo Facility, and how banks and other SOFR users can manage volatility that may emerge in the rate.

To mark Independence Day this week, this classic replay episode of the ABA Banking Journal 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.

“We’re seeing banks that have never been scrutinized before for redlining and being told that they have risk that they have not before and risk in ways that they’ve never really viewed it before,” says Andrea Mitchell. “We’re in some new territory, and I think it’s important for CEOs to understand what their compliance officers and legal departments are seeing on the ground.”

In the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Andrea Mitchell, a top fair lending attorney, reviews the latest trends in redlining enforcement. She reviews cases brought by the Justice Department, the importance of screening programs, planning for entering new markets, the role of peer analyses in managing redlining risk and the effects of redlining enforcement on M&A activity.

Mitchell also discusses the intersection of DOJ enforcement and prudential supervision, noting that “if your regulator thinks you’re doing very well, even in in terms of minority market lending, and is relying on your CRA rating, there’s nothing that prevents HUD or DOJ or other agencies from scrutinizing you.”

Brent Beardall thinks bankers need to be more comfortable with risk. “We’re not out there taking crazy risk, but my point is don’t be afraid to fail,” says the president and CEO of WaFd Bank, based in tech-focused Seattle. “If you’re going to fail: fail quickly, fail small. That’s the two requirements I have, because if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.”

In the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — sponsored by Alkami — Beardall discusses technology experiments that didn’t work, and those that did. He discusses the bank’s tech lab subsidiary Archway Software and its combined voice- and phone-based authentication for wire transfers.

Beardall discusses WaFd’s commercial real estate portfolio, which he notes is majority “stabilized multifamily, which is the safest asset class that we or any bank can make.” Office buildings — the most distressed CRE asset class — account for just 4% of WaFd’s portfolio, Beardall says, noting that CRE is a big and diverse sector beyond the office headlines.

Finally, Beardall talks about his remarkable personal story of surviving a deadly plane crash in early 2023. “You’re flying on a jet airplane to go to the Rose Bowl, and all of a sudden you go from being pretty good to fighting for your life and you realize just how vulnerable you are and how precious life is because it can change in a heartbeat,” he says. “People that I competed with, bankers that I would compete with, they set it all aside and said, “Let’s focus on helping each other.’ We have a lot more in common than we have in terms of differences, and let’s give equal weight to what we have in common and work together for the collective good.”