Kicking off Oct. 13, Community Banker University® is hosting a four-part Mergers & Acquisitions Webinar Workshop series presented by Gerrish Smith Tuck. This series replaces ICBA’s annual, live in-person M&A Workshop for 2020.

As the calendar turns to September, millions of Americans gear up for their favorite sport of football. Of course, with this being a year unlike any other, we’re still trying to figure out what it will look like. Nonetheless, what better way to usher in the new football season than to relate common gridiron phraseology to its investment portfolio equivalent?

How does the financial crisis of 2008 compare with the pandemic-driven economic crisis of today? Though both significantly impacted our economy, there are key differences between the two.

Independence is at the heart of many community banks’ ethos, but how do community bankers embed this core value into their strategic planning? Here are three critical strategies that use succession planning and board management to maintain independence.

Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, which is why we recently kicked off its application period for our third ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator cohort--to maintain the program's momentum and ongoing quest to identify technology solutions that solve for community bank pain points.

While policymakers continue debating new approaches to mitigate the coronavirus' ongoing impact, one issue has attracted newfound scrutiny as the pandemic’s economic consequences unfold: How will these financial pressures affect the U.S. housing market?

Unless you have been living on a desert island for the past few years, you would be hard-pressed to miss the technological revolution that is sweeping our nation’s financial system and the larger global economy.

Catching synthetic identity fraudsters remains difficult, and the fall-out of not detecting it, is substantial. AI company Coalesce estimates that synthetic identities account for more than 20 percent of losses in a loan portfolio, and for credit, they average 4.6 times the typical loss.

Community banks have long served the small-business market, but given the pandemic impact, new opportunities have emerged to support these customers’ payments needs and address areas of friction.

When I think about customer-permissioned data sharing, I am reminded of the scene from the movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Ferris and his best friend, Cameron, leave the keys to a Ferrari with an attendant only to discover later that the valet has taken the luxury sports car out for a joy-ride.