Main Street Matters Blog

Community banks have long served the small-business market, but given the pandemic impact, new opportunities have emerged to support these customers’ payments needs and address areas of friction.

The coronavirus pandemic, hurricane season, and the wildfires on the West Coast, stand as prudent reminders of how critical disaster preparedness is not only for community banks, but for our communities at large.

From having to adapt to retail closings, diminished staff and customer capacities, a new work-from-home infrastructure, and more, the nation’s small businesses have reacted quickly in the wake of the pandemic.

In an environment where innovation needs to be continual, how can community banks succeed? Blake Swafford, senior innovation officer at SimplyBank, sums it up well. “It’s about being really committed to innovation."

Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, which is why we recently kicked off its application period for our third ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator cohort--to maintain the program's momentum and ongoing quest to identify technology solutions that solve for community bank pain points.

Unless you have been living on a desert island for the past few years, you would be hard-pressed to miss the technological revolution that is sweeping our nation’s financial system and the larger global economy.

Catching synthetic identity fraudsters remains difficult, and the fall-out of not detecting it, is substantial. AI company Coalesce estimates that synthetic identities account for more than 20 percent of losses in a loan portfolio, and for credit, they average 4.6 times the typical loss.

Community banks have long served the small-business market, but given the pandemic impact, new opportunities have emerged to support these customers’ payments needs and address areas of friction.

When I think about customer-permissioned data sharing, I am reminded of the scene from the movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Ferris and his best friend, Cameron, leave the keys to a Ferrari with an attendant only to discover later that the valet has taken the luxury sports car out for a joy-ride.

Central Payments, the payments arm of the $238 million-asset Central Bank of Kansas City (CBKC) never imagined that a few days into their Falls Fintech accelerator program, they’d have to transition to a fully virtual experience. But due to COVID-19, that’s exactly what happened.