Recently added articles from US Banker:
Raking in the Fee Income; Despite recession, banks' income from insurance activity increased in 2008. Citi continues to dominate, but Wells and BofA - thanks to big acquisitions - are catching up.
Jul 01, 2009; ... Byline: Alan Kline Among bank holding companies, Citigroup Inc. remains the industry leader in generating insurance revenue, but rivals Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. are closing the gap. According to data compiled by Michael White Associates of Radnor, ...
Getting in the Game; Adding Web-based interactive puzzles and entertainment to the marketing mix adds to brand awareness. The real contest for banks is turning gamers into customers.(Marketing)
Jul 01, 2009 ... Byline: Anthony Malakian To help promote its new contactless payment card, Barclays plc produced a video game aimed at young consumers-the demographic the bank sees as most likely to use the card. The player has 20 seconds to aid a swimmer through a maze of ...
AD BEAT: New Ally, Big Splash; The former GMAC Bank bets on a name change and an image overhaul to reverse its fortunes.(Marketing)
Jul 01, 2009 ... Byline: Anthony Malakian Despite its ties to the beleaguered General Motors and its own capital concerns, GMAC Bank had little trouble attracting deposits after it established a bank holding company in December. Deposits surged 16 percent in the first quarter, to $22.5 billion. ...
Match Game; Banks need money, and private equity's got lots of it - $1 trillion by some estimates. It seems like a natural marriage and there have been some high-profile pairings, yet many of the industry's heaviest hitters are still just looking, held up by concerns about pricing, control and the uncertain economy.(Cover Story)
Jul 01, 2009 ... Byline: John Engen The story behind the year's biggest bank failure was, in many ways, typical of the financial crisis. BankUnited Financial, Florida's largest homegrown banking company, was knee-deep in bad housing loans. It had tried several times to raise capital, and ...
The Dollars and Sense of Going Mobile; With budgets shrinking and customer habits shifting, bankers are focusing less on the buzz and more on the bottom line of mobile-banking services.(Mobile Banking)
Jul 01, 2009; ... Byline: Glen Fest Banks that latched onto mobile banking a few years ago were more interested in first-mover advantage than profitability. But the squeeze on IT budgets, along with the growing popularity of banking services on smart phones, is shifting bankers' ...
Keeping a Tight Schedule; Whether adopted in-house or on a "cloud," workforce optimization technology is helping H.R. departments reduce employee overhead - without sacrificing service.
Jul 01, 2009; ... Byline: Steve Garmhausen Rauly Butler, the retail banking manager at Mechanics Bank in Richmond, Calif., calls the bank's recent investment in sophisticated scheduling technology a "no-brainer." The technology should save the $2.8 billion-asset Mechanics $865,000 a ...
Your Ad Here, Free; Colorado's FirstBank, a creative advertiser in its own right, plans co-promotional marketing services, on the house, to its beleaguered business clients.
Jul 01, 2009; ... Byline: Anthony Malakian It's hard to succeed in business without marketing, but try telling that to small-business owners in a recession. When struggling to find buyers for their goods and services, many shop owners are thinking more about making payroll than, say, investing in ...
Such Language! Enforcement orders can be harsh. A new advocacy group - Community Bankers Revolt - says they don't have to be.
Jul 01, 2009; ... Byline: Robert Barba Can saving face help save a struggling bank? Chuck Frost, the president and chief executive officer of First State Bank in Winchester, Ill., believes it can. His $36.3 million-asset bank is negotiating the terms of a cease-and-desist order with regulators, ...
Past the Point of Debate on TCE Ratio; Critics say that the TCE ratio can understate or overstate a bank's health because its calculation includes unrealized securities losses, which are inherently volatile.(Commentary)(Editorial)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Alan Kline, Editor-in-Chief As a longtime banking journalist I probably shouldn't admit this, but until a few months ago I'd barely ever heard the term "tangible common equity." When evaluating the health of a bank, my colleagues and I had always been encouraged by ...
On the Hunt to Catch the Thief Within; With rogue trading and other types of insider fraud on the rise, technology that can detect employee misdeeds tops banks' wish lists.(Conference news)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Dear God, send me an accident," or so goes every risk manager's prayer, jokes Eva Leighton, director of operational risk at Citigroup, making light of the difficulty risk managers face in using only risk data to effect real change. But those who uttered ...
Slow and Steady Wins the Race; Top 200 Community banks and thrifts ranked by 3-Year Average ROE.(Snapshot)(Brief article)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Alan Kline It wasn't long ago that banks in slow-growth states such as Pennsylvania and New York were seen as laggards because they couldn't keep pace with their counterparts in go-go markets like Florida, Arizona and Nevada. But the real estate collapse has left many ...
Taking a New Swipe At Debit Incentives; Using card-spending data to create targeted rewards often engages more debit usage - and could create new profit centers for banks.(Marketing)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Glen Fest Busey Bank of Champaign, Ill., has given out debit rewards since 2005 to increase incremental revenue from cardholders through interchange, and add-on services, like bill-pay. The program generates about $62 in annual revenue per account, but Busey ...
AD Beat: Cashing In on Cash; What started out as a small-scale campaign to breathe life into a flagging kids' savings program has led to an image makeover for one Arkansas bank.(Marketing)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Anthony Malakian When brainstorming over the winter about potential mascots to promote First Arkansas Bank & Trust's children's savings program, the bank's marketing team considered the usual suspects: superheroes, Barney, cartoon characters and the like. The problem, ...
A Stimulating Development; The Obama administration's commitment to promoting sustainability, energy efficiency and other environmental initiatives has community bankers seeing green.
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Anthony Malakian Talk about good timing. Just weeks after Congress passed a massive economic stimulus bill that included more than $40 billion of green initiatives, organizers of the environmentally focused e3bank were given a stamp of approval in April by the ...
Counselor Loan-Mod Tool Aids Lenders in a Pinch; A portal used by credit counseling agencies is speeding up workouts - and providing relief to overworked servicing teams at such firms as Wells, BofA and Chase.(Early Resolution Counseling Portal)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Kathy Brister A software tool conceived as a way to bring faster relief to troubled borrowers now holds promise for aiding the overburdened banks that backed those mortgages. The tool - called the Early Resolution Counseling Portal - shifts much of the ...
Seeking to Solve A 401(k) Riddle; The market for selling retirement plans to small businesses is wide open, but few banks are jumping in because profits have been elusive. Several institutions believe online platforms are the answer.(Wealth Management (Retirement Planning))
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Steve Garmhausen SunTrust Banks Inc.'s launch in April of a retirement plan platform for small employers seems like a no-brainer. According to ING Direct, just 20 percent of U.S. businesses with fewer than 25 employees have retirement plans, and the rest of the market is ...
Integrating Risk Management With Financial Performance.(OpEd)(Conference news)
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Steve Culp, Accenture Spring opened with the G-20 Summit in London, where world leaders agreed to extend financial regulation to all systemically important institutions, take a common approach to cleaning up toxic assets, and establish a forum to broaden international ...
Financial Misconduct is Not Just a Civil Matter.
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Douglas L. Davies and Laura Marquez-Garrett, Foster Pepper PLLC The FBI is shifting more than $75 million in resources from counterterrorism work to help sort through what has been characterized as "the wreckage of the financial meltdown," and financial industry ...
TRADE: Trying to Rehabilitate Trade Finance; The secondary market ground to a halt last fall. Now it's coming back, with the help of the IFC, the U.S. Import-Export Bank and other export agencies.
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Joseph Rosta World trade is declining this year for the first time since 1982, and by a projected nine percent, according to the World Bank - the steepest plunge since World War II. A large part of this drop has to do with the deep global recession limiting consumer ...
Protectionism is not Self-Defense; It may be politically popular but promoting it would surely deepen the recession.
Jun 01, 2009; ... Byline: Joseph Rosta Former President George W. Bush increased 300 tariffs in the final days of his administration; Congress successfully inserted "buy-America" provisions into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to repatriate ...