May 17, 2023

Congratulations to the banks celebrating May and June anniversaries as chartered institutions!

Rebecca Burch — Trust Administrator. Her background includes administrative experience in both RIA and bankruptcy trustee/attorney offices. She will be a great addition to our team as a receptionist and ongoing administrative support to all TCK account officers.

The recent passage of SECURE 2.0 has generated dozens of new provisions that affect virtually all types of retirement plans, with the intent of helping employees increase their retirement savings. Many new provisions also provide opportunities to access retirement nest eggs to offset unexpected expenses — including pension-linked emergency savings accounts (PLESAs).

TISA. Q: We have recently made a change that our online banking logins will expire after 18 months if a customer has not logged in. This may trigger them to begin being assessed paper statement fees, if they sign up for e-statements (there is no cost), as the paper statement fee is determined by an online account being established and maintained. The $3.00 paper statement fee is listed as one of our fees on our fee chart; however, customers don’t know that they have to log in every 18 months to keep their online account from expiring and therefore start incurring the paper statement fee. I feel that this should be disclosed in some way, but I’m not sure how best to do it. We can push a message to all online account holders. Would that be acceptable?

According to the National Safety Council, slips, trips and falls are the third leading cause of injury in the workplace. Some of these incidents occur at banks with employees or customers. While these mishaps might be commonplace, there is a proactive approach banks can take to help reduce the risk of their employees and customers being injured in a slip, trip and fall. A smart place to start: analyze both the physical conditions of the premises and usage and traffic flow patterns, which can often identify potential hazards that should be addressed.

Uncertainty seems to be the only constant on the economic horizon these days.

Windows 11 is here, and while it may seem like an enticing upgrade, it is important to consider whether or not your business should make the switch. The new Windows operating system has many similarities to Windows 10, but there have also been some significant changes with this release that could impact your workflow.

I think we can all agree that there has been plenty to be concerned about in the last, say, five years. Some are environmental issues, some are social and, for community bankers, plenty are economical. What gets a lot of play in the business, and even mainstream media, is our growing national debt. There’s no doubt that the mountain of borrowings that keeps our federal government liquid and solvent is greater than ever before. It’s not surprising to me that there’s spirited debate about debt limits, or if Congress will ever in our lifetimes find a way to slow our dependence on deficit spending.