Bank Nerd Corner

Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Susan Seaman, partner at Husch Blackwell, for a deep dive into one of banking law’s most complex and underappreciated topics: federal preemption under the National Bank Act.

Susan walks through three Wisconsin cases, Burner, Lako, and Rifford, that all looked at the same state notice and right-to-cure requirement for charged-off debt and reached contradictory conclusions. She uses them as a cautionary tale about what happens when high-stakes preemption questions come out of high-volume consumer courts, and why that uncertainty exists in the banking system today.

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Who owns the deposit relationship, and what happens when it isn’t you?

This episode of Bank Nerd Corner comes to us by way of Darling Consulting Group’s On the Balance Sheet podcast, where Kiah recently joined hosts Vin Clevenger and Zach Zoia, along with Justin Bakst, executive director of products and solutions at DCG, to talk about the future of deposits.

They dig into what technology and demographics could mean for deposits and what it really means for a financial institution to own the deposit relationship. They also get into agentic AI and product ideas that could appeal to millennials.

Big thanks to Vin, Zach and the whole DCG team, and catch more of On the Balance Sheet at https://www.darlingconsulting.com/dcg-podcasts

(On the Balance Sheet is produced by Darling Consulting Group. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are solely their own and may not represent those of DCG or its affiliated businesses. Qualifying any financial or investment references made during the recording is highly recommended, as they may not reflect current markets.)

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Is an AI-induced bank run coming, or is that just banking getting more competitive?

In the October episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and cohost Alex Johnson of Fintech Takes break down the biggest stories in the bank space.

First up is the ICBA’s lawsuit against the OCC and Comptroller Jonathan Gould over trust bank charter approvals. The group argues the OCC has far exceeded its statutory authority by letting companies use trust charters as an effective side door into the banking system. Kiah and Alex dig into whether the case holds up and whether the ICBA can actually prove the harm it claims.

Next, they take on the AI bank run worry. Personal AI assistants like Meta’s Muse took off, bank stocks sold off, and Apollo’s chief economist raised the prospect of an AI-induced bank run. Is that really a run? How should banks compete when customers’ agents can shop rates for them? And is an AI agent that moves your money just a deposit broker by another name?

Then it’s rant time. Alex goes off on news that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is investigating Wells Fargo over its special purpose credit programs, while Kiah stews over a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman that criticizes CECL, the accounting standard behind loan loss reserves.

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Kiah:

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When a bank adds AI, who’s actually on the hook for what?

In this midseason check-in on Agent of Record, Kiah talks with Alex McLeod, CEO and co-founder of Parlay Finance, about the shared responsibility model Alex has developed in response to how quickly and broadly financial institutions are adding AI.

Alex borrows the shared responsibility model that governs cloud computing to help banks make sense of the different vendor arrangements that exist with AI. Her model has four: owning the full stack, building the harness, configuring the platform, or inheriting the agent. She argues the column a bank sits in should determine what it’s on the hook for, from model governance to deployment evaluations to fourth-party risk.

Agent of Record is a 12-episode limited series podcast that explores artificial intelligence in financial services. 

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This episode is brought to you by Parlay Finance.

Small business and SBA lenders lose hours chasing documents and checking eligibility before a deal ever reaches underwriting.

Parlay Finance's AI-native Loan Intelligence System (LIS) cuts manual work to qualify a deal by 80% — automating intake, document processing and deal structuring upstream of the Loan Origination System (LOS) — so lenders can close more loans without sacrificing credit quality.

See how at ⁠www.parlay.finance⁠  

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Alex McLeod on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcleodalexandra/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/⁠⁠⁠⁠

Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/khaslett⁠⁠⁠⁠

Subscribe to Kiah: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠

What does the core deposit playbook look like in 2026?

On this episode of Bank Nerd Corner, Kiah records live from MX's Money Experience Summit with two people who think about deposits for a living: Jason Lazzerini, EVP and chief digital officer at Central Pacific Bank, and Matt West, chief revenue officer at MX. Together they dig into how banks can engage customers to grow those deposits, and why the old approach isn't cutting it.

Jason shares how Central Pacific Bank, a Hawaii-based institution with $7.5 billion in assets, has evolved its thinking on customer primacy over time. Matt explains how technology has changed the way banks need to think about their core customers and those ever-important deposits, and what it all means for agentic commerce and personal AI assistants.

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/

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Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Lindsey Johnson, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association, for a conversation about consumer health and the group’s priorities for the year ahead, recorded live last week at the CBA Committee Summit.

CBA represents the retail banking industry, with members ranging from midsized regionals to the country's largest banks.

Kiah and Lindsey open with a deep dive into the state of the American consumer. CBA's research shows a persistent disconnect between how consumers feel about their finances and how they're actually doing.

Lindsey believes that gap reflects more than income and expenses, it's about assets and ownership too. She also shares an exclusive preview of new CBA research showing that wages, which had climbed steadily over the past six to eight years, are starting to flatten out.

Looking ahead, Lindsey reflects on a landmark 2026 for CBA, why fraud remains her biggest concern, and her hope that banks can be agents of change in the agentic commerce era, not bystanders waiting for the rules to catch up.

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠

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Agent of Record is a 12-episode limited series podcast that explores artificial intelligence in financial services. 

In this episode, cohosts Kiah Haslett of Fintech Takes Banking and Parlay Finance CEO Alex McLeod welcome Patrick Slain, a banker and a builder.

Patrick shared what happens when a risk-trained banker decided to start automating his personal life — and hasn’t stopped. What began as a single low-risk task automation has grown over 15 months into a personal agentic system with more than 100 scheduled automations organized under a structured org chart. He explained how he designed his systems and leveraged his banker mentality, often seen as a source of institutional drag, to build in resiliency, redundancy, governance and security.

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This episode is brought to you by Parlay Finance.

Small business and SBA lenders lose hours chasing documents and checking eligibility before a deal ever reaches underwriting.

Parlay Finance's AI-native Loan Intelligence System (LIS) cuts manual work to qualify a deal by 80% — automating intake, document processing and deal structuring upstream of the Loan Origination System (LOS) — so lenders can close more loans without sacrificing credit quality.

See how at www.parlay.finance  

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Alex McLeod on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcleodalexandra/⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Taylor Nelms, Vice President of Research and Insights at the Financial Health Network (https://finhealthnetwork.org).

The Financial Health Network is a nonprofit think tank that works with banks, credit unions, fintechs, employers and other organizations to improve the financial health of American consumers.

The Financial Health Network Pulse Survey measures consumer financial health across four pillars — spending, saving, borrowing, and planning and protecting — to generate a FinHealth Score. This metric captures a household's financial life: cash flow, liquidity, debt manageability, long-term savings progress and insurance confidence.

Taylor shares some sobering high-level results and three forward-looking warning signs emerging from the 2026 survey. They then dig into why financial institutions should care.

It turns out that a socially responsible strategy can also build loyalty and growth with financially healthy consumers.

Financial Health Pulse® 2026 U.S. Trends Report: https://finhealthnetwork.org/research/financial-health-pulse-2026-u-s-trends-report/

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Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Taylor on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-nelms/

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In this latest episode of Bank Nerd Corner Squared, Kiah and cohost Alex Johnson are headed "north of the border" to Toronto for the FDATA 2026 Global Open Finance Summit.

With the help of two guests — Alex Vronces, who formerly led Fintechs Canada, and Claire Brownell, who covers the future of finance at The Logic — they discuss how Canadian regulators and policymakers are changing how the country approaches financial innovation, perceives its place in the global hegemony, fosters competition in financial services and responds to crises and scandals. 

Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Alex Vronces on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-vronces-0b35593b/

Follow Claire Brownell on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-brownell/

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Agent of Record is a 12-episode limited series podcast that explores artificial intelligence in financial services. 

In this episode, cohosts Kiah Haslett and Alex McLeod welcome Steven Townsend, SVP and Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Topeka (https://www.fhlbtopeka.com).

Townsend shares his experience spearheading AI adoption at FHLBank Topeka over the past year.

FHLB Topeka stood up an innovation lab stocked with development workstations that are off the bank network, allowing employees to experiment, and hosted hackathons that paired developers with business staff who had never written a line of code. The concept has resonated with FHLBank staff.

Steven discusses model interchangeability, evaluation frameworks and why breaking risk concerns into discrete, addressable problems works better than trying to resolve everything at once.

For institutions weighing where to start, Townsend's takeaway is direct: get the tools in front of people, make them drive, and let word of mouth do the rest.

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This episode is brought to you by Parlay Finance. 

Small business and SBA lenders lose hours chasing documents and checking eligibility before a deal ever reaches underwriting.

Parlay Finance's AI-native Loan Intelligence System (LIS) cuts manual work to qualify a deal by 80% — automating intake, document processing and deal structuring upstream of the Loan Origination System (LOS) — so lenders can close more loans without sacrificing credit quality.

See how at ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.parlay.finance⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

---

Fintech Takes Banking is the weekly newsletter for bank execs who get it. Subscribe for the latest in regulation, tech, financials, operations and, yes, accounting, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Follow Steven Townsend on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-townsend-cfa/

Follow Alex McLeod on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcleodalexandra/⁠⁠⁠

Follow Kiah:

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/⁠⁠

Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/khaslett⁠⁠

Subscribe to Kiah: ⁠⁠https://fintechtakes.com/banking/newsletter-subscription/⁠