American Banker Magazine January 2017

As you plan for the coming year — and beyond — here are some challenges and opportunities worth thinking about.

The phony-accounts scandal at Wells Fargo illustrates how sales quotas can incent bad behavior. Is your bank effectively mitigating the risk of 'managing to metrics'? Or could it be in danger of becoming a 'cargo cult'?

For years, there's been a lot of talk about personal information as an unalloyed asset. But by now it should be clear that the more information a company has about its customers, the bigger a target it is for hackers.

Nondepository lenders are beating their bank competitors when it comes to both digital innovation and market share in the mortgage industry. As interest rates rise, banks will need to move toward electronic closings and adopt other innovations if they want to stay competitive.

The growth of digital channels is changing bank M&A values, forcing buyers to focus less on branches and more on the volume of customer data.

Artificial intelligence is moving from science fiction to practical reality fast, and it's in banks' best interest to gear up now for the changes ahead. Here are some strategies to consider.

Though banks are bigger in peer-to-peer payments overall, Venmo is better at functionality and branding and millennials love it. Now banks are launching Zelle with high hopes and the advantage of real-time speed. Can they catch up? Should they even bother?

Banks are grappling with new challenges in trying to work with voice assistants like Alexa in Amazon's Echo to allow customers to check balances and perform other tasks. But with voice banking on the horizon, banks cannot afford to stall their efforts.

Directors today are expected to perform many duties that, even a decade ago, weren't part of the job, from overseeing cybersecurity and the bank's culture to setting online and mobile strategy. Yet the composition of many bank boards hasn't changed all that much. Here's what to do if you have longtime members who lack the skills needed to help a bank compete.

Joint accounts sometimes seem stuck in another era. Here’'s how to modernize them.

Patent-troll litigation costs American companies $29 billion a year, and fintech startups as well as big banks are now in the crosshairs. A growing number are banding together to defend themselves.

Even in a digital era, human connections still matter. That is one big disadvantage for fintech startups and increasingly for banks as customers stop making regular branch visits. So it is instructive to hear SoFi's thinking on how to overcome this challenge. It is trying some unorthodox tactics to better understand the people behind the data and to create meaningful connections with them.

Some are replacing legends, others are overseeing major mergers or product launches, and at least one big-bank CEO is on the hot seat. These are the industry executives to keep an eye on in the new year.