Posts by Gregg Early
Revitalize Your SMB Checking Accounts and Take on the Megabanks
By Gregg Early A study done by the Independent Community Bankers Association (ICBA) revealed that community banks provide about 60% of SMB loans nationwide. That puts community financial institutions at the center of their communities. It also means that SMBs are a crucial part of a healthy community FI’s portfolio. Both these axioms are the…
Read MoreIt’s Time to Get Beyond Basic Banking
By Gregg Early Few people get excited about basic banking – paying bills, managing account balances. However there is a way to augment these mundane banking functions by extending lifestyle-based banking features so that FIs can help consumers save money when they need to spend it. Doing this offers a unique level of value that…
Read MoreRemember Who Won David vs Goliath
Channel the Power of Organic Growth by Gregg Early Let’s not talk about the past year. Let’s take the long view and talk about the past decade and a half. For nearly all of that time we lived in a “next normal” of quantitative easing, which brought along with it easy money and sustained…
Read MoreDon’t Fight the Tape: Get Beyond Chasing New Deposits
While certainly an arrow in the quiver, community financial institutions can’t solely rely on growing deposits to thrive. By Mike Branton and Gregg Early It has been a wild ride for banks and credit unions. The shift from a low-growth, low interest rate environment to its complete opposite in less than 12 months…
Read MoreMake Your Financial Institution a Financial First Responder
By Gregg Early When we talk about first responders, we usually envision law enforcement, military, and fire and rescue workers running towards danger as everyone else is running from it. But banks and credit unions can be financial first responders to the dangers – and opportunities – that occur in the lives of customers…
Read MoreMassachusetts Bankers Association Partners with StrategyCorps to Modernize Engagement for Retail Checking Products
Massachusetts Bankers Association (MBA) is excited to announce its new relationship with StrategyCorps as a Preferred Provider. Since its founding in 1905, MBA has served the state’s financial services industry by promoting the strength and success of Massachusetts banks and bankers, as well as the communities and individuals those financial institutions serve. MBA represents the…
Read MoreHow Community Banks and Credit Unions Remain Relevant in an Increasingly Digital-Driven Sector
By Gregg Early There’s no doubt that there’s a significant gap between the banking industry’s long-term strategic challenges before the pandemic and after the pandemic. When branches shut down, traditional financial institutions only had their existing digital banking infrastructure to rely upon. And sometimes, it was just the bare minimum. I remember calling a…
Read MorePrimacy: The Bigfoot of Banking
With the acceleration of digital banking, we’ve heard a lot about customer primacy (or primary account holders). By Gregg Early But as we asked bankers around the country about this, we seem to get a number of answers and non-answers. Almost to a person all of them say that maintaining and expanding primary accounts…
Read MoreAdapt or Die Is More Than Metaphor in This New Digital Banking World
By Gregg Early There is no doubt that the banking and financial services industry has transformed significantly since 2008. On a broader scale you can see from the chart below that the only asset size that’s really gaining any ground in recent years are the mega banks. Source: Next City And no community bank or…
Read MoreWhat the Rise of Embedded Fintech Means for Community Banks and Credit Unions
By Gregg Early Since “The Rise of the Fintechs,” a lot of terminology has been thrown into circulation. Some doesn’t last more than a few months, some is in continual flux. And other terms start to mature and redefine themselves. That’s where we find ourselves with “embedded fintech.” Not so long ago, the most…
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