To understand how bankers will prioritize their digital strategies in light of the tumultuous year that was 2020, CSI—a leading provider of fintech and regtech solutions—polled banking executives from around the country, representing 272 financial institutions from across the asset-size spectrum. The data from this survey was then collected and used to create an executive report to help bankers gain insight on the industry’s hottest topics and strategies.
 
What Did Bankers Have to Say?
It’s hardly surprising that, when asked about the future of the industry in CSI’s 2021 Banking Priorities Executive Report, digital transformation thematically unified every priority. While taking stock of their 2020 performance and assessing the year ahead, banking executives almost unanimously agreed: Digital use will likely not return to pre-COVID levels.
 
Bankers began the survey by reflecting upon the past year with this question: please rate your bank’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the following areas on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest.

The debate over regulating the payments industry has become more important than ever with vigorous activity around regulatory rollback and repeal. Preventing price fixing and regulatory overreach in the banking profession are important considerations, but preserving the interest of community banks and credit unions should be at the heart of the debate.

In recent weeks, rhetoric supporting the idea that efforts to repeal Dodd-Frank should include a complete repeal of The Durbin Amendment has dominated the news. Much of the chatter is focused on pricing controls imposed under Durbin, with no consideration or little understanding of the second unaffiliated network requirement provision and prohibition on routing restrictions, which protects competition in the debit payments market.

What bankers know, and some of the op-ed authors have forgotten, is the best way to keep your costs in check is to make sure there is healthy competition between providers. The two unaffiliated network requirement and prohibition on routing restrictions do exactly that. They preserve the right to choice and flexibility for both bankers and merchants, and diminish influence that entities with significant market power would leverage to create longer-term damage in the market.
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