Race discrimination lawsuit: Goldman Sachs wealth manager Rebecca Allen is suing the bank and one of its managers, Christina Minnis, for discrimination. Allen, who is black and Jewish, said that, despite her stellar performance, her company has denied her opportunities that directly affected her pay and potential future promotions. She also said that the few black employees at Goldman are treated differently where career development factors are concerned.
Wooing millennials: Fifth Third Bancorp says its new app will help young consumers round up debit card purchases and apply the additional funds to repay student debt. The app is part of its effort to woo millennial customers and compete with megabanks for consumer deposits. “We’re under-indexed in the millennial generation, and while we strive to serve all of our customer base, we want millennials to grow with us financially and look to us for their future financial needs,” said Melissa Stevens, chief digital officer of Fifth Third. Inspired by fintech apps like Digit and Acorns, the app, called Momentum, lets customers link Fifth Third debit cards to student loan accounts held by more than 30 servicers. They can round up their debit card purchases to the next dollar, or have a dollar added to every purchase. Momentum also includes game-like features such as badges customers can earn for continuing to stick with their savings habits and “nuggets of financial information and tips.”
Ignoring millennials: While millennials are set to inherit more than $59 trillion in assets, federal financial regulators are behind in hiring them and focusing on issues of concern to them, says Kristen Hutchens, a securities lawyer at Pickard Djinis and Pisarri and former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. As of March 2017, only 18.6% of federal financial regulatory employees were 34 or younger (compared to 30% in 2010). The OCC has the highest percentage of millennial employees at 28.1% and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had the lowest at 10.6%. Hutchens suggests each agency discuss whether to create millennial advisory committees and whether to include more millennials on existing advisory committees as members step down or new committees are created. “For federal financial regulators, how to fix their millennial blind spot is an important $59 trillion question,” she says.
Faster payment dodge: The Federal Reserve has said it will assess a range of options regarding its role in a modernized payment system. Kansas City Fed President Esther George said yesterday that the Fed will support continued industry momentum toward a faster and safer payments system: “Thanks to the collective efforts of hundreds of payment system stakeholders during the past two years, we’ve made real progress,” she said. The issue of faster payments is one that divides small banks, which want the Fed to take a more active stance, and large banks, which have yet to embrace that idea.
Tubman $20 bill in doubt: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is being noncommital about the new $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman’s portrait. “Ultimately we will be looking at this issue,” Mnuchin said. “It’s not something I’m focused on at the moment.”
Role call
WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation has tapped Susan Keating, president and CEO of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, as its new CEO, effective Dec. 1. Keating succeeds Susan Stautberg.
Beyond banking
Tennis champ Serena Williams is upending the notion that women who choose to fully invest in their career success before marriage or motherhood are “selfish.” In anticipation of the birth of her first child, Williams has said she’s “nervous of the thought of putting someone before me, because my whole life all I've thought about is in terms of myself: my training, my work, my tennis.” Williams also has said she’s “so used to me-me-me, taking care of my health, my body, my career … I always ask, am I going to be good enough?” ESPN points out that “singular focus on one's self, one's career, one's pursuit of happiness, is a quality celebrated in men,” whereas women are encouraged to “have it all.” “What that really means is that women are expected to be everything to everybody — wife, mother, successful professional — the embodiment of feminine selflessness.” But, the articles contends, “You don't become the greatest at something without being selfish.”
