The Banker Next Door

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on October 10, 2026. How are banks currently performing? Wall Street is expecting record bonuses again in 2026. Update on M&A deal activity. Loan growth continues to be good, but there is concern around increasing interest rates and how that may affect margins in the third and fourth quarters. Banks continue to see increases in auto lending. Finally, the Federal Reserve is considering changes to the current $10 billion-dollar regulatory asset threshold. This episode reviewed multiple articles from The Wall Street Journal and S&P Global (subscriptions required).

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 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved plans to further open private markets or alternative assets to individual investors. Many investors are locked out of the best investments such as Hedge Funds, Private Equity, IPOs, private placement memorandums, etc. due to financial qualifications required by the SEC. Under current securities laws an individual must meet the financial criteria of an Accredited Investor. The current financial criteria is a net worth over $1 million (excluding your primary residence) or income over $200k (single) or $300k (married) in each of the prior two years. In 2020, the SEC added additional Professional Criteria, which...

Nano Bank in Irvine, California has become the sixth bank failure of 2026! 2026 has now become the year with the largest number of bank failures this decade. The next largest year is 2017 with eight bank failures. In terms of asset size, the combined six bank failures this year account for approximately 1.41 billion is assets, which is minuscule compared to the $552 billion that was lost in 2023 with three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history. Nano Bank was a very troubled bank reporting a loss of $75 million for fiscal year 2025. Nano’s total assets ranged between $690M to $736M. Th...

This episode is an interview with Old Glory Bank CEO, Mike Ring. Before Mr. Ring became CEO of Old Glory Bank, he worked as an attorney; earning a JD and LLM in taxation. He started his own law firm specializing in corporate and securities law. Mr. Ring is also the founder of multiple other businesses including Haymon Sports and Katz Broadcasting. Mr. Ring is a veteran, having served honorably in the U.S. Air Force. In the interview, Mr. Ring and I cover a number of topics that range from the founding of Old Glory Bank, the type of...

What is ‘Effective Altruism’ or EA? Is it a cult, philosophy, or just a bunch of weirdo’s living together at houses in San Fran? Kind of a mix of all three. EA has grown as a ‘philosophy’ over the last 25 years. The problem with this? Many of its acolytes permeate elite academia and Silicon Valley. Namely, OpenAI, Anthropic, the failed FTX, and the almost failed Situational Awareness. The idea behind EA is quantitative analysis to figure out how to maximize the use of money in a way to ‘save the most lives.’ The more lives you save? I don’t know, ap...

There have been several deals in the last few years featuring fintechs buying banks. Some examples include SoFi purchasing Pacific Bank and Lending Club purchasing Radius Bank. But with the recent announcement of Valley National Bancorp purchasing Bluevine, could the script be about to flip? Could this be the first of multiple transactions involving banks purchasing fintechs? This deal is a game changer and it certainly puts everyone on notice. Banks will need to change their strategy in the years ahead and purchasing a fintech that already has the technology or products that they need is easier than starting...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on October 4, 2026. The residential real estate market is dealing with a lot of challenges at the moment. Interest rates for a 30-year mortgage are well over 7.00%. This exacerbates the affordability issue. The residential market is also dealing with rising prices and the ‘lock in effect’, where property owners have locked in mortgages rates between 3-4% and do not want to lose those fixed rates. Residential homeowners currently have trillions of dollars in equity, but they will not unlock that equity by selling or taking out home equity loans beca...

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...

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...

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 as...

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...

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...

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...

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 2...

SBA approvals are down 18% in 2026 compared to 2025. Loans are down because the SBA had to fix a lot of the problems coming out of the Biden administration. Namely, lax underwriting, which led to delinquencies, and expanding the programs to some lenders that should not have had access. SBA loans to specialty trade contractors fell 22% through mid-2026 due to a new eligibility rule barring green card holders. Furthermore, the SBA has proposed changes to NAICS codes and lifting size limits for what is considered a small business. Both proposals are horrible and should not move forward. This episode reviewed three...

On the eve of a new documentary titled “You Can See Everything” coming out in October, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the epic disaster that was Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Theranos was a “Decacorn” start up, meaning it had a $10B valuation, that provided state of the art blood-testing equipment that was supposed to revolutionize the healthcare industry. The company’s product and claims were found to be fraudulent. CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend at the time, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were both convicted and sent to prison. They are both currently still serving their prison s...

Bank News: WestStar Bank agreed to acquire Southwest Capital Bank, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. First National Bank of Omaha continues to grow through smaller acquisitions. The bank has announced two acquisitions in the last four months. M&F Bancorp rejected unsolicited offer from mystery bank and decided to move forward with Optus Financial merger. P&S CU agreed to merge with FireFighters CU. New Haven Teachers FCU agreed to merge with Nutmeg State Financial CU. OCC conditionally approved national bank trust charters for Bastion Platforms Trust Co., Agora National Trust Bank, and Catena Trust Bank...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. The AI trade is imploding! In less than 30 days the narrative went from everything is great, we are making money, its IPO time, to there might be a few problems with our Frontier AI, to these AI systems might destroy us, to please regulate us now!!! The IPOs are on hold, the revenue streams are all BS, companies have blown through their AI tokens, Chinese competition is increasing, and they are burning through money they don’t have. Answer: Regulatory Capture! The tech bros are looking fo...

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.

A new independent review conducted for the Federal Reserve by Starling Advisory Group on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank examined the role of the Federal Reserve supervisory staff to ask if they failed in their oversight of the bank. The report detailed seven critical findings. In releasing the findings, Michelle Bowman stated that the Fed supervisory staff should have known and that SVB’s failure fundamentally shook public confidence in the effectiveness of bank supervision. However, this report did not address the root cause of the run on deposits. It’s connection with the crypto market. The fact that...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. As the situation with Mark Walter and his companies continues to unfold, it appears that he used retirement assets for his spending binge on professional sports franchises. As this comes to light, BlackRock is hard at work to get Private Credit and other alternative assets stuffed into your 401(k). The narrative here is that suddenly Wall Street wants everyone with a 401(k) to have access to the best investments because they care so much about your well-being. If I may offer an alternative idea, Wall Street...

De Novo or start up credit unions are not performing well. Of the last five de novo credit unions, two have been liquidated and one is currently operating as “uncapitalized.” The two credit unions that were liquidated both failed within six months of starting, making them some of the quickest failures since 2016. Former National Credit Union Administration Chairman Todd Harper stated, “New credit unions often unfortunately do fail, and they fail quickly because of a lack of expertise, a failure to follow their business plans or unanticipated consequences.” Since 2016, only 28 new credit unions have been formed. This episode reviewed an artic...

Bank News: PNC, Regions, and Citizens executives don’t want to be distracted by potential M&A deals. PNC could be open to M&A, but current valuations make a deal unlikely. Citizens is open to bolt-on deals if they focus on the payments area. Bank7 is seeking to purchase 100% of Century Financial. Bank charter approvals more than double from 2025. Synapse victims turn to small-claims court as they are still trying to recover funds years later. Enova scraps merger deal with Grasshopper Bank. Nubank launches in the U.S. through a partner without full regulator approval. Truist exists near-prime au...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 19, 2026. The Clarity Act failed to advance through the Senate on a 50-49 vote. It needed 60 votes to pass. This failure puts this bill in real jeopardy as the midterm elections approach and both houses of Congress have gone on recess. At the same time, the SEC cleared the way for tokenized stock. Was this a smart move on the part of the SEC?

This is part 41 of the crypto series. The Clarity Act failed to advance out of the U.S. Senate. The measure failed on a 50-49 vote. It needed 60 votes to pass. Every democrat and three republicans voted against it. The failure puts the bill in serious jeopardy with the midterm elections coming up in November and the House of Representatives in recess until after the election. Who is to blame? The crypto industry appears to be placing the blame on Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. There was a strong chance of getting this legislation passed in January of...

According to Bank Director’s 2026 Technology Survey, banks are feeling the pressure from increased competition, emerging technology, and changing strategy. Key findings from the report include efficiency over growth, getting educated on artificial intelligence, gauging AI usage, integration challenges, prioritizing payments, and most not sold on crypto. A majority of bank executives view financial technology firms including Block and PayPal as their greatest competitive threats. Only 16% of bank executives see cryptocurrency or stablecoin as a top competitive threat. Perhaps the biggest finding is that 70% of bank executives say their bank does not have a strategy to reach younger accountholders. Th...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 12, 2026. Private Credit favorites Blue Owl and Jefferies face new issues. Jefferies is staring down a potential $500 million loss from Radiant World. Blue Owl Capital cut the value of its loans to Loparex to near zero. In addition, the current oil shock is testing Private Credit borrowers with high debt loads. Smaller borrowers are seeing rising defaults. The episode reviewed articles from Reuters, Seeking Alpha, CNBC, and The Business Journals.

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.

Who is Jane Street? They are a mysterious high frequency trading hedge fund on Wall Street that seems to have its hands in everything with some questionable behavior. Jane Street was started in 2000 by three former executives of Susquehanna International Group and an IBM developer. There is no public face to the firm, and they do not like publicity. New hires are discouraged from drawing any attention to themselves or the firm. That means no media and anything that might catch the attention of regulators. Jane Street has grown from a handful of employees to over 3,500 with $45 billion in...

Italian bank Monte Dei Paschi (BMPS) has had quite the saga over the last two years. BMPS has had CEO issues, multiple potential merger partners, rogue board members, and tons of media! Everything a good banking soap opera needs. When last we left BMPS, Intesa Sanpaolo made an offer to purchase the world’s oldest bank seeking to create the “UBS” of Italy. BMPS responded by attempting to purchase Banco BPM. Intesa Sanpaolo received pushback from Italian regulators and offer to split up BMPS by selling the retail part of the bank to BPER Banca SpA. BMPS has fended off th...

Security Bank & Trust President Andy Schornack worked with several employees to develop an AI credit workflow solution for processing commercial loans. Andy had investigated several fintech providers and found they had several product solutions, but the costs were prohibitive at five and six figures. These were very high costs for a $1.3 billion community bank to absorb. Andy’s wife, being in the software business, suggested that he try Anthropic’s Claude Cowork. Using Claude, Microsoft Power Platform and SharePoint Andy was able to create an automated workflow solution that was able to replace the current manual process. The cost of t...

Bain & Company recently released a report detailing their outlook on U.S. bank M&A through 2030. Some of the key findings include: 1) there will be at least one bank to cross the $1 trillion assets threshold but could be as high as 2-3 via M&A, 2) There will be continued consolidation for small and larger regional banks, 3) There will be continued consolidation for community banks, 4) Banks should consider under-the-radar options when screening M&A targets, and 5) While scale-and-scope deals are currently outperforming, banks should consider buying fintech challengers. This episode reviewed Bain & Company’s bank M&A report titled “Hidden Gems...

Bank News: Chime to buy Stride for $590 million. Chime outgrew their partner model. Will the Chime deal lead to further fintech-bank competition? EverBank to purchase WaFd in a reverse merger for an approximate cost of $3.9 billion. Does this merger have execution risk? John Marshall Bancorp to purchase in-state peer Eagle Financial Services for $253 million. Finward Bancorp considered 7 different merger partners before accepting First Financial bid. Circle buying Tazapay for approximately $400 million. Bank7 wins auction to purchase 71% of Century Financial. Trustmark bank sells 34 branches to Blue Owl Real Estate Capital in sale-leaseback deal valued at $91.7 million. The founders of Georgia...

This video is a clip from BND: Strategy Room Live Stream on September 5, 2026. Bond market yields are not just increasing in the U.S. they are increasing all over the western world. France, Italy, UK, and Japan have all seen increasing 10-year treasury yields. The growing global debt of $350 trillion is getting very expensive to service. Inflation, the war with Iran, $40 trillion in national debt, and a new Fed chairman are all weighing on the U.S. bond market. This leads to several questions. Will the U.S. require a weaker market (i.e. recession) to achieve lower yields...

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.

This episode reviewed recent data for bank IPO’s and capital raises, M&A activity, new charter requests, FDIC problem bank list, recent bank failures, the return of shareholder activism, and the impact of rising yields on accumulated other comprehensive income or AOCI. Capital raises through preferred equity (IPOs) picked up in the second quarter of 2026, but subordinated debt and senior debt are still the preferred vehicles. Bank charter applications hit 33. M&A activity has picked up with 98 deals so far in 2026. The number of banks on the FDIC’s problem list dropped to 47. The number of bank failures in 2...