The Banker Next Door

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

The industry is currently seeing a few trends in mergers and acquisitions. Recent M&A transactions suggest that quality deposits are in high demand and commanding a market premium. Acquirers are seeking banks with strong low-cost deposit franchises. Additionally, the FDIC is seeking to modernize the bank M&A process by updating competition analysis. The goal is to overhaul part of the process and make it easier for banks to get deals done. Critics say the proposal does not go far enough, and they would like additional competitors added such as online banks, fintechs, and other nonbank providers. Finally, bank acquisitions by credit unions are starting to heat up again with multiple recent transaction announcements. It appears this trend is ready to pick up speed again. This episode reviewed multiple articles from S&P Global Market Intelligence (subscription required) and Bank Director. The article from Bank Director is titled “Why more credit union and bank mergers are on the horizon.” A link to the Bank Director article is included below.
Link: Why More Credit Union and Bank Mergers Are on the Horizon | Bank Director

Has your bank struggling with digital account opening? Perhaps because of persistent fraud issues? First Farmers Bank and Trust (“FFBT”) was not happy with their existing account opening process, which could take up to 45 minutes to complete. They decided to work with a fintech named Prelim. Prelim’s technology was able to work with FFBT’s existing core system Fiserv. After implementing Prelim’s software and turning on the digital account opening the results could not have been better! The time to open an account dropped from 45 minutes to 10 minutes, a 78%-time savings. The number of digital account openings increased 86% through the first half of 2026. A 100% decline in identity fraud was realized. Prelim was able to put forth a solution that solves a major pain point for community banks. This episode reviewed an article from ICBA titled “First Farmers Bank and Trust: An innovative approach to digital account opening.” A link to the article is included below.
Link: First Farmers Bank & Trust - ICBA.org

Bank News: Nano Bank becomes the 6th bank failure of 2026. Valley National Bank to purchase Bluevine for approximately $340M. Peoples Bancorp is cleared by the Fed to complete their purchase of Citizens National Corp and quickly announced their second purchase of 2026 with Capital Bancorp. Gulf Winds credit union makes their second purchase of a bank in the last month with an agreement to buy Alabama’s Peoples Exchange Bank. First National of Nebraska completed their purchase of Blue Ridge Bank and Trust Co. Bank7 is set to complete their purchase of Century Financial. WaFd will go over $50B in asset size with their proposed reverse merger with EverBank Financial Group. Mission Lane received conditional approval from the OCC to form the first credit card bank in over 20 years. Mercury CEO says that pursuing a bank charter is their top priority. Parkway Bancorp closed on $350M private placement and hires new executives. Amerant Bank continues to tackle credit issues. River City Bank and American Savings Bank both had successful IPOs in the last few months, who’s performance may give other banks hope of trying. Michigan credit union CEO is fired over photo. Fed finalized stress-test changes. Fed OIG finds that construction project was mismanaged, but there is no criminality. This episode reviewed multiple articles from Banking Dive and S&P Global Market Intelligence (subscription required).

John Harold Rogers was prosecuted by federal authorities on one count of lying to investigators and one count of espionage. He was found guilty of lying to investigators but cleared on the espionage charge. He is currently serving a 38-month sentence. Mr. Rogers served as an economist and senior official at the Federal Reserve. His story takes many crazy twists and turns. He became the asset of a Chinese spy, who he shared a lot of information with over the years. Was this information publicly available or sensitive information not for public consumption? Mr. Rogers ended up marrying a Chinese girl and having a child with her. Was all this arranged by the Chinese contact? Maybe not, but his contact absolutely played the role of his benefactor and made many “things” happen. Mr. Rogers engaged in a lot of bizarre and out of the ordinary behavior that went on for a period of over 10 years. It is hard to imagine his superiors did not suspect that something was amiss. A recent OIG report found the Fed needed to improve security after multiple breaches. This episode reviewed multiple articles from The Wall Street Journal, Banking Dive, and CNBC.

What are the top regulatory issues in the banking industry for the 4th quarter of 2026? The banking lobby was able to get The Clarity Act stopped in the Senate, at least for now. The 21st Century Road to housing Act became law on June 10 and has several items that help banks. Final 1071 rule includes strong community bank exemptions. ICBA continues to push for legislation to repeal or modify Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank. More legislation continues to advance including Farm Bill and Main Street Capital Access Act. Genius Act rulemaking continues. ICBA continues to question Master Account Access and banking charters being issued by the FDIC and OCC. Other items being worked on include Regulation O, CRA proposal, lower assessment for community banks from FDIC, campaign against credit unions, fraud and scams, CDFI working group, artificial intelligence executive order, and Dodd-Frank Section 1033 rule (Open Banking rule). This episode reviewed ICBA’s Advocacy in Action for the fourth quarter of 2026. A link to the PDF is included below.
Link: top-issues-2

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 26, 2026. As interest rates continue to rise, is there a correlation between rising bond yields and oil? Over the last week we saw rapid increases in the 30-Year Treasury and 10-Year Treasury. History shows us that as interest rates rise rapidly something always breaks! Where will the break come from? The bond market, multi-family apartment buildings, Government debt, or perhaps the residential real estate and mortgage markets?

The Banker Next Door (BND) weekly live stream show. Strategy Room provides financial news, commentary, top stories in the business world, economic indicators, and all things banking for the week.

ICBA recently released a white paper on bank cyber insurance. The paper discusses current market challenges which include escalating premiums and shrinking coverage, inconsistencies in underwriting, and exclusions, sublimits, and ambiguity. The current AI risk gap in cyber insurance is addressed. The paper then goes into insights and recommendations from community bankers. The paper then wraps up with recommended questions to ask your insurer regarding AI coverage. What makes this paper great are the checklists provided. On page 10, there is an internal readiness checklist with items that should be completed before meeting with your insurer. On page 16, there is a checklist of recommended questions to ask your insurer regarding AI coverage. This episode reviewed a white paper from ICBA titled “Safeguarding Resilience: Navigating Cyber Insurance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

This is part 42 of the crypto series. Bitcoin has increased to $86K is the ‘crypto winter’ finally over? Circle gets a $100M investment from Binance to ramp up global push for their USDC coin. Bastion receives conditional approval from OCC to provide their ‘white label’ stablecoins for other businesses. The company will also manage custody of holding reserves and customer wallets. After The Clarity Act failed to pass through the Senate, the SEC, CFTC, and Federal Reserve are moving to write crypto rulebook. The SEC issued an order to create a temporary pathway for trading certain tokenized stocks, moving toward 24/7 trading. The CFTC submitted a crypto rulemaking proposal to the White House for review. Details of the proposal were not made public. The Federal Reserve proposed rules for stablecoin issuers which would require issuers to back stablecoins with Treasury Bills and develop an application process for banks that want to issue stablecoins. This episode reviews multiple articles from CNBC, Banking Dive, S&P Global, and The Wall Street Journal.