South Shore Savings Bank is making banking history, but nothing like the history it’s made over the past 175 years. Arthur R. Connelly, chairman of South Shore Bancorp is the new chairman of the American Bankers Association (ABA), the first mutual savings banker to occupy the prestigious position. Moreover, Connelly is the first Massachusetts banker to head the ABA since Charles B. Hall, cashier, Boston, N.B., in 1875.

In 1765, Boston was a town of 15,520 people, well over half of them children, on a peninsula spiked with wharves.  Though small, Boston was the third-largest settlement and business center in North America, behind only Philadelphia and New York.   For more than a century, Boston’s merchants had prided themselves on their part in the British Empire’s economic engine.   But that year, the local economy would almost break down because of the financial failure of one man.

With current economic conditions presenting unique challenges, community and regional banks are turning to sale-leaseback transactions to monetize real estate assets and drive incremental earnings.
The fact that real estate ownership (as opposed to control) is not strategically important to financial institutions makes the concept of eliminating these non-earning assets still more appealing.
The subprime mortgage crisis, stock price declines, a restricted consumer loan market, and tighter funding sources are all causing banks to rethink their approaches to balance sheet management. Sale-leaseback transactions provide a route to diversification of funding sources and potentially increased shareholder value.

Risk management isn’t just for big banks. Small and medium-sized banks  should also apply risk management principles.
There are three methods of risk management:
Avoidance of risk
Assumption of risk (either knowingly or unknowingly)
Allocation or transfer of risk           
Risk avoidance limits growth potential. This article will discuss the last two options.
Assuming risk should be done knowingly. When a company grows, it assumes risk, but it should do so prudently by comparing its exposure to loss to its potential gain.
Allocation or transfer of risk lets a bank assume more risk without entirely bearing the exposure to loss. The bank transfer can transfer most of the risk to an insurance company while retaining part of the risk through the use of deductibles, coinsurance and limitations.

On Wednesday, July 30th, President George Bush signed into law sweeping housing relief legislation that, at 694 pages, many industry participants call the most significant housing reform in decades. By doing so, he enacted a massive series of actions intended to benefit many economic constituencies who have been negatively impacted by the current credit crisis, including current homeowners, first-time home buyers, mortgage lenders, local communities, federal agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and even tangentially-related sectors like the construction and appraisal industries.

Whether it is the current state of the economy forcing consumers to live paycheck to paycheck or the growing number of consumers who simply prefer to pay in cash, it is clear that walk-in payments are becoming more prevalent. Financial institutions, big or small, need not be left out of the opportunity to provide consumers with this flexible, convenient payment option and should consider a walk-in solution to keep pace with consumer demand and remain competitive.
As an alternative payment solution, walk-in payment services enable financial institutions to offer a valuable service for their own customers and also serve the growing unbanked and underbanked community. Walk-in payments also aid financial institutions in the collections arena, providing another convenient option to collect and, thus, generate ever important fee-based revenue.

As the U.S. financial industry goes from high-flying tightrope walker into free fall, and the government struggles over how to intervene, the basic concepts of risk and value remain in place. A breathtaking cascade of events started with the government bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG, the dissembly of the investment baking system, and the $700 billion Treasury proposal to buy distressed assets to sell at a later date. But what taxpayers eventually recover depends in large part upon the worth of those assets at the time of sale. And the worth of those assets will be measured in large part by the proper assessment of risk.

Today's preteens and teens are tomorrow's customers. How do you reach the kids who grew up with the Internet – the iPhone, YouTube and Facebook generation? Youth culture has been ratcheted up to light speed, but the banking industry is slow to adopt new marketing strategies.
One reason is risk. While early adopters gain a head start against competitors in customer retention and acquisition, the return on investment must be evaluated versus waiting for the technology to mature and become commonplace.
“The financial service industry is up against a ‘commodification’ of products and services,” said Michael Seaton, vice president of Digital Marketing at Thornley Fallis Communications, an agency integrating social media with public relations. “New media – meaning social media tools and platforms – provides a range of choices to directly reach out and humanize the banking experience. Transparency and authenticity are front and center and brands must differentiate themselves around their actions, not slogans.”
“The demographics and psychographics of our customers are dynamic,” said Steve Coen, a consultant in the financial industry and retired CIO of Buffalo-w based M&T Bank. “Product and delivery demands are changing, and we must serve our customers on their terms; how, when and where they demand services.”

Online banking is widely considered to be one of the all-time greatest applications of the Internet, yet many banks are squandering the opportunity to add droves of new online customers because they do not offer customers an alternative to signing paper documents to open an account online.

The rumors of the death of the subprime mortgage market are not exaggerated or even untimely. In fact, it seems as if a plague of sorts has infected the industry, and it started with the dubious and sometimes downright predatory habits of many mortgage bankers and brokers. Cries of irresponsible business practices in the industry and marketing schemes that drove lending guidelines are cropping up all over the media nowadays, but it seems like a little of the hindsight is 20/20 type rhetoric.

Since his appointment as the New York State Banking Department’s 43rd Superintendent in March, Richard H. Neiman has had plenty of weighty issues vying for his attention...

Identity theft is widely and correctly viewed as an insidious crime, wherein a person’s good name and financial standing are tarnished, often through the criminal misuse of credit and debit cards. But many of the programs and insurance policies designed to protect a person against the ravages of identity theft are extremely limited in scope...