As the calendar has now flipped to January, we know your bank has the large task of assigning employees annual training and ensuring your bank’s training program is robust, engaging, and comprehensive. It is a major task for banks and we hope you will take advantage of the 300-plus courses that ICBA has to offer in its online training library.

Tina Giorgio: There’s something about the start of a new year that breeds optimism and fresh perspective. Challenges give way to opportunities, and obstacles become puzzles to solve. That positive tenacity intensifies for me as I look at 2018, a year in banking like no other. From the digital revolution to the role of fintechs, a new day has dawned, and in its light, we see the sprouting progression of community banking.

Sheltered Harbor is a financial services sector initiative that enables financial institutions to securely store and rapidly reconstitute account information while recovering from a cyber incident or natural disaster.

Tina Giorgio: When I gaze back on my career, I see peaks and the valleys; the times where I knew where I was headed and the times where I felt I was driving at night without headlights. In my role as a community banker, in particular, things seemed to accelerate with lightning speed. Sometimes, I was clairvoyant, reading that market crystal ball like a road map, and sometimes, well, let’s just say that we adapted.

To give community bankers the lay of the land on the fast-paced and fluctuating tax reform debate, ICBA released a new informational brief with the latest details.

Tina Giorgio: My goal is not only to ensure that community banks stay relevant when it comes to real-time payments but ensure that solution providers are delivering affordable, integrated solutions for community banks that are easy for them to deploy,

Thank you for subscribing to ICBA’s Community Banker University Online Training Center. We hope that you find the training informative and beneficial for your community bank. Online training is one of the easiest ways for community banks to educate their staff on required regulations, job functions and a multitude of other areas such as personal development, management and customer service.

Tina Giorgio: While we wait for the details on the Equifax breach, we have found the community banks are taking the lead in protecting customer information.

A community bank’s success relies on steady, solid leadership forged from a shared vision and a goal to exceed customers’ expectations. That’s at least the way Brad Bolton, president and CEO of Community Spirit Bank in Red Bay, Ala., sees it.

Apparently Wells Fargo isn’t content to tarnish its own reputation—it has the gall to try to hide behind the sterling reputation of the nation’s community banks.