Bankers continue to see pressure on net income and many are attempting to improve results by reducing expenses and maximizing fee income.

By now, most banks have set their 2015 targets into motion, including return on assets, return on equity, efficiency and asset quality goals.

In the wealth management industry, optimizing wealth manager productivity while satisfying client needs for interaction with those managers is a delicate balancing act.

As the economic downturn that began in 2008 deepened, credit tightened, consumers switched to other payment methods and credit losses reached historically high levels.

How much should community banks and credit unions pay their employees in the current tough banking market? That’s a question that we probed in the 2014 edition of our Retail Salary and Benefits Study for Community Banks and Credit Unions.

The heightened use of customer insight for the delivery of financial services and the continued impact of digital channel development dominated the list of predictions that I gathered for the fourth edition of my annual banking trends study.

Mobile devices have revolutionized how consumers and businesses interact with financial products.

One the most famous phrases in U.

Ever since cash dispensers became automated teller machines (ATMs), pundits have regularly said that the large retail banks are going to have to change their core systems or they will lose their customers.

Whatever the format – traditional, in-store or mini – the branch is still the primary channel where consumer sales and referrals originate.

Is the banking industry in the midst of a major shift in the way we are structured and do business? No one knows for certain.

As we head into the second half of the decade, most retail bank managers recognize that the survival of their institution is tied, at least in part, to redefining branches as sales and service hubs.

Talk about an under-appreciated tool.

Are retail banks building strong foundations for cross-sell or forfeiting major opportunities? A lot depends on the approach to onboarding, a set of activities aimed at cementing and expanding new customer relationships.

When considering a branch transformation, is it better for a financial institution to operate one 5,000-square-foot branch or two 2,500-square-foot branches? Not sure? Good.

A branch distribution executive recently described exactly what it’s like trying to keep up in a “next-gen” era: “It’s a race without a finish line,” she said.

Last January, we published in BAI Banking Strategies our estimates for deposit interest rates in 2014.

As one of the most prominent women executives in banking, Sallie L.

“Overdraft fees should not be ‘gotchas’ when people use their debit cards,” said Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), after the regulatory agency published its most recent report, “Data Point: Checking Account Overdraft.

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