The turnaround for Tucson Old Pueblo Credit Union is still under way, but the progress to date has been exceptional. Just seventeen months ago, the credit union was struggling with loan losses from an overly aggressive indirect lending portfolio. The credit union’s president and CEO, Joe Mirachi, offered to discuss their progress over the past year.
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Some 20-plus years ago, I came face-to-face for the first time with a household database.
The federal government had a few years earlier de-regulated (make that re-regulated!) the financial services industry. Our bank had completely redesigned its retail deposit product line based on consumer preferences and a segmentation approach we developed internally. And our immediate task was to roll out the new line to both customers and prospects by matching products with preferred benefits. Read the whole story »
As you may remember, the Treasury Department proposed a far-reaching plan to restructure the financial services regulatory system last June. Called 21st Century Financial Regulatory Reform, the general tenor of the proposal addressed many of the 22 specific and substantive areas that the FCIC was charged to investigate.
Regardless of our political persuasion, we can all agree that accuracy is something that should be demanded from our politicians. Over the last several weeks, we have consistently heard the refrain, “We want our money back!” from President Obama in referring to banks and the TARP program. He has used this as a rallying cry for the need for financial services industry reform and additional limitations on financial service providers.
The proposed “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” is designed to cover the complete cost of rescue, an estimated $117 billion.
With severe economic challenges, triple-digit bank failures, mounting losses and new regulatory pressures, could the times have been any worse? However, contributors to The Raddon Report did their best to provide light in this “season of Darkness,” as they urged our readers to use this economic period as a historic opportunity to capture market share from ailing competitors and nurture existing customer relationships through differentiation.
By now, you are aware of the pending legislation and regulatory reforms to limit overdraft fees. Long story short, as of July 1, 2010, the Federal Reserve will require consumers to opt-in to overdraft protection for debit card and ATM transactions. Financial institutions will no longer be able to charge overdraft fees on debit and ATM transactions without the consumer electing overdraft protection.