Main Street Matters Blog

ICBA's Kevin Tweddle discusses unexpected benefits of ICBA's ThinkTECH Accelerator program with community bankers John Buhrmaster of First National Bank of Scotia, N.Y., and Scott McComb of Heartland Bank in Whitehall, Ohio.

The oldest Millennials are pushing 40 and are well established in the financial services landscape, but with Gen Z—the elders of whom are college-aged—we have a digital native group with new expectations.

In 2018, Same Day ACH volume reached 178 million transactions, an increase of 137 percent over the previous year. As a readily available faster payments option, and one that many community banks are familiar with, Same Day ACH serves as a practical and immediate option to support your bank.

Community banks have gotten it right again. With the evolution of technology and the rise of a movement to all digital-banking, others within the industry have been chasing new channels with fervor trying to find the silver bullet that ensures their relevancy.

First-party fraud and synthetic identity fraud is an area of growing concern, exacerbated by difficulties of identifying these attacks, but there are ways the industry is fighting back.

ICBA continues to lead the opposition to mixing banking and commerce through exploitation of the ILC loophole, recently expressing strong support for new legislation that would close it.

While all faster payments options have one thing in common—moving money and information faster—there are often distinct differences or subtleties when comparing today’s various faster payments offerings.

“Because we’ve always done it that way” are perhaps the seven most painful words in the English language when it comes to innovation. It’s the death of new ideas that challenge conventional ways of thinking and the antithesis of the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator program.

It’s the fastest growing type of financial crime in the U.S., costing U.S. lenders $6 billion in 2016, and it’s not what you might think.

With minority depository institutions continuing to serve a crucial role, their decrease from a high of 215 in 2008 to less than 150 today is a significant concern.