For this last post of 2022, and considering the absence of “news you can use” between Christmas and New Year, we bring you some of the topics and posts that most interested our audience of community banking and credit union leaders. We’ve got some of the regulatory highlights, the trends on banking fees on non-interest income, and why the coming end of Google Universal Analytics is a problem today for community FIs.
1. The Year Regulators Turned up the Heat on Fintech
Even before the spectacular crash of crypto platform FTX, federal regulators spent much of 2022 signaling their intent to bring more and more non-bank entities under their supervision. For example:
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The CFPB criticism of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) apps
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Oportun Financial’s record fine for fee disclosures
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Even to OCC is getting in on it new Fintech oversight
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The FTC’s new focus on consumer data protection
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And the most popular post on how it all started with Dodd-Frank
2. The End of Fees and impact on NII
A growing concern for banks and credit unions of all sizes is the increasing pressure on non-interest income from fees, either by competition or regulation. Some popular posts:
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Bloomberg’s analysis of the overall industry decline in fee revenue
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The CFPB’s growing saber-rattling on fee regulation
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A case study on eliminating fees as a strategy
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And an interesting Fed study on the impact of low-cost deposit accounts
3. Getting ahead of Google Analytics
In 6 months, the most prominently used web analytics software by community credit unions and banks will come to the end of its life, and most aren’t prepared for it. Google Universal Analytics will sunset on July 1st, but the problem is urgent for FI’s:
You are likely part of the 90% of community credit unions and banks that rely on Google Analytics to inform and answer these critical questions. Over half of these FIs are only running a version that will stop providing these answers in July. Worse yet, most plan to move to the newer version but don’t realize their data will not go with them. They are starting from scratch for trends and seasonality and every day they wait, they are losing that data forever.
And so wraps the week and the year. Thank you so much for reading our nonsense. It’s our pleasure to put this together for you each week, and we look forward to keeping you both informed and sometimes entertained in 2023. As always, let us know what you think of this or any other post at blog@mindspaninc.com. Have a great New Year.