As the Federal Communications Commission prepares to vote Thursday on a proposal permitting telephone companies to block unwanted calls, ABA submitted two letters to the commission explaining how it could result in the erroneous blocking of lawful calls placed by banks. The letters expanded upon arguments made by ABA and other trade groups in a separate communication late last week urging the FCC to seek feedback before moving forward with the proposal.

In remarks Wednesday at a meeting of community development bankers, FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams highlighted several ongoing initiatives at the agency to strengthen and sustain the nation’s community banks, including the highly-anticipated reform of the Community Reinvestment Act regulations.

McWilliams stressed that modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act will focus on clarifying exactly what bank activities qualify for CRA credit. The revised regulatory framework will also address the lending offered beyond a bank’s brick-and-mortar market area, as well as ways to ensure that CRA investments target those most in need within the community. While she did not put a timeline on the reform process, she noted that she continues to meet regularly with her counterparts at the OCC and Federal Reserve “to see if we can come to a broad agreement on a set of priorities for CRA reform.”

The National Credit Union Administration board last Thursday proposed a rule that would allow federal credit unions to have up to 50% of their deposits come from other credit unions and government entities, up from a 20% cap. As NCUA acknowledged in its proposal, the 20% cap dates to the late 1980s and was imposed “because of the asset/liability management problems related to public unit and nonmember shares that arose at certain FCUs, which resulted in material losses for the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund.”

Question: How do you climb a mountain? Answer: One step at a time.

Dr. Richard Deming will be the fellowship keynote at this year's SDBA/NDBA Annual Convention on Monday, June 3. Join Dr. Deming for his session "Above + Beyond Cancer" as he teaches us that through adversity, we can all achieve personal growth. As we focus forward, Dr. Deming will teach us that life is a gift and not a single minute should be “un-lived.”

The heads of the banking agencies told lawmakers that they expect to have regulatory changes from the S. 2155 regulatory reform law implemented by year-end. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee last week, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles said that the agencies are “on track to complete the implementing actions for S. 2155,” adding that they would “have the bulk of the implementing actions completed by the third quarter of this year and all of them completed by the end of this year.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Tuesday introduced a long-awaited bill—S. 1564—calling for a delay in the implementation of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s current expected credit loss standard until a quantitative impact study can be completed to understand its likely effects it will have on the economy.

The bill comes after bipartisan groups of lawmakers from both the House and Senate earlier this month wrote to the heads of several regulatory agencies raising concerns about CECL. ABA—which has long highlighted the procyclical effects of the standard to both lawmakers and regulators—welcomed the bill’s introduction.

The ABA Core Platforms Committee—a group of 20 bank leaders representing community and midsize banks—on Tuesday met with top executives from four of the nation’s largest core processing firms. During the meeting, the bankers shared their concerns on three key issues—data access, API deployment and contract fairness—with FIS, Fiserv, Jack Henry and Finastra. The representatives of each participating core agreed to provide written responses by July 15 to explain how they will address those issues and were invited to meet with the committee again in August.

Evolving digital technologies, shifting consumer preferences and increasing competition are creating new challenges for banks. As the banking industry is being transformed, there is uncertainty around what the future of the industry will look like over the next decade. Are you ready to re-imagine the future of banking?

Christie Obenauer’s family-owned bank had a problem. Based in a rural county in western North Dakota, her community had been dealing with the prospect of population decline, but then the North Dakota energy boom brought an influx of newcomers. “It’s a wonderful problem to have.”

While Obenauer’s bank—Union State Bank in Hazen, N.D.—isn’t in the oil patch directly, it serves as a bedroom community for many who commute into the oil areas. It’s also home to large coal-mining operations. In the face of the housing crunch, her bank got involved in financing homes across the western part of the state. And with a need for housing that could be deployed quickly—“We had people thinking they could live in a camper in January, which . . . no. You can’t do it,” she chuckles—she also worked with the Bank of North Dakota and a state agency to develop a secondary market for manufactured homes.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last Thursday issued a proposal to provide relief for smaller institutions from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection and reporting requirements. The proposal would increase the coverage threshold for closed-end mortgage loans from 25 loans to either 50 or 100. For open-end lines of credit, the CFPB is proposing to extend for another two years the current temporary coverage threshold of 500 open-end lines of credit. After that, the threshold would be permanently set at 200.

The SDBA is encouraging banks to join the ABA’s Safe Banking for Seniors campaign to help educate older Americans, their caregivers and other family members about how to identify and prevent elder financial exploitation.

The South Dakota Bankers Association (SDBA), the professional and trade association for South Dakota’s financial services industry, recently held elections for three of the nine seats on its Board of Directors. Elected to serve on the SDBA Board of Directors were:

• Pete Mehlhaff, President/CEO, Great Plains Bank, Aberdeen
• David D. Nelson, Senior Vice President/Branch Manager, First Fidelity Bank, Platte
• Kristina Schaefer, General Counsel/Director of Risk Management, Fishback Financial Corporation, Sioux Falls

This is Mehlhaff’s first term on the SDBA Board of Directors and Nelson and Schaefer’s second terms. They started their three-year terms on May 1, 2019.

Technology has sent the world into warp speed and changed many things. Yet, true leadership is based on “ancient” principles. Professional speaker and author V.J. Smith will share the time-tested and core ideas of what separates exceptional leaders from average leaders at the 2019 SDBA/NDBA Annual Convention.

The nation’s farm banks increased agricultural lending by 5.3 percent, or $5.5 billion, to $108 billion in 2018, according to the ABA’s annual Farm Bank Performance Report released Tuesday. With non-performing loans remaining at a pre-recession level of .52 percent of total loans, asset quality was also healthy among the nation’s 1,772 farm banks.

The SDBA will appoint standing committee members for the upcoming year in May. SDBA committees are: Agricultural Credit Committee, Credit Card Committee, Legislative Committee and Trust Committee. Terms are one year beginning May 1, 2019, and ending April 30, 2020, except for the Legislative Committee which is a three-year term. Legislative committee members can serve two, consecutive three-year terms.

As a volunteer for your Association, you will be contributing to a stronger banking industry. We respect the time commitment that each committee member has made and work hard to ensure the meetings are well run and productive. Committees meet once or twice a year to initiate activities and recommend policy.

The SDBA's Agricultural Credit Conference originally set for April 10-12 but canceled due to weather has been rescheduled to Aug. 14-16 at the Ramkota Hotel & Conference Center in Pierre. Conference content will be the same as the April agenda with slight changes to the order of some sessions. 

Registrations for the original conference date will carry forward to the new date. If the new date does not work for any registrants, they may cancel with no penalty. If you were not able to attend the original conference dates but can now attend, there is still room to attend. See the revised Agricultural Credit Conference agenda.

Chatbots? Machine learning? Open banking? Faster payments? Should you replace your staff with chatbots or showcase your staff within digital channels? How will the arrival of real-time payments change existing bank products and services? Are bigtechs or digital challenger banks a bigger threat than megabanks? And how will you strategically differentiate your bank from the competition?

The SDBA will appoint standing committee members for the upcoming year in May. SDBA committees are: Agricultural Credit Committee, Credit Card Committee, Legislative Committee and Trust Committee. Terms are one year beginning May 1, 2019, and ending April 30, 2020, except for the Legislative Committee which is a three-year term. Legislative committee members can serve two, consecutive three-year terms.

SDSU Extension is bringing two different types of farm stress workshops to the state.

Communicating with Farmers Under Stress: Join a multi-disciplinary team of SDSU Extension experts to explore the subject of farm stress, a subject that’s affecting the lives of many South Dakota farmers and their families. The primary audience for this workshop includes professionals who work with or support farmers and farm families, such as inspectors, financial advisers and those associated with farm service type agencies.  This workshop will be held on April 15 in Aberdeen, Sioux Falls, Pierre and Rapid City and on May 23 in Lemmon, Winner, Watertown and Mitchell from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. CDT.  The cost to attend is $30, and lunch will be provided. Register for an April 15 location. Register for a May 23 location. 

The SDBA's Agricultural Credit Conference scheduled for this week in Pierre has been postponed due to the weather. The SDBA is currently working on a new conference date for late summer/early fall.

Once a new date is determined, registrations for the original conference date will carry forward to the new date. If the new date does not work for any registrants, they may cancel with no penalty. We ask that registrants wait to see if the new date will work for their schedules before canceling. Be watching for an announcement next week on the new date for the SDBA Agricultural Credit Conference.