Sometimes the Security of a Community Bank Isn't About Cyber

I love community banking.

I didn't know that when I started my career in this industry back in 2007, but I fell in love with it very quickly.

Community banks invest in small businesses and make up the backbone of our nation’s economy, employment, and job growth. Many larger institutions turn away from these businesses.

They give back to their communities in the form of sponsorships, charities, and donations.

Community banks provide good jobs to many of the communities that they're based in. This often happens in towns where professional employment otherwise is limited.

They care for their customers – they get to know them and truly want to help them.

Our mission here at Bedel Security is to change the way community banks manage cybersecurity.

But that mission is rooted deeply in our love for community banks, their customers, and their employees. If you follow our blog, you know that 99.9% of our material is about managing cybersecurity. But it's not off-brand, off mission, or off-topic to share other information or other resources that can help secure community banks in other ways.

In this case, I'm talking about your technology stack, your digital strategy, and your FinTech partnerships.

I wish I was completely an expert in all of those things and could just share all of that information in my blog posts with you, but we're smart enough to know where we're experts and we stay in that lane. We find other experts that can help with the things we don't know and today’s blog post is about sharing a resource that does just that.

Around the end of 2021, I met Christopher Williston, the President & CEO of Independent Bankers Association of Texas and one of the founders of Bankers Helping Bankers. Christopher and I have a ton in common, specifically our mutual love for community banks. (In fact, I think Christopher is even more passionate about it than I am!)

Recently Christopher partnered with Dave and Tanner Mayo at FedFis and they began to ask the question: “how do we help community banks win the fight?”.

They came to the realization that there's just not enough support and collaboration for community banks in areas like: technology, efficiency, innovation, fintech, and crypto.

• What if we could help banks with the technology selection process?
• What if we could help them optimize their technology stack?
• What if we could help community banks understand what’s working well for their peers?
• What if we could help understand and find fintech partnerships?
• What if we could help educate on new frontiers like cryptocurrency?
• What if we did all that without vendors mucking it up?

With this vision in mind, they set out to develop a free resource for community banks that could do just that. Their community, Bankers Helping Bankers, is an amazing tool. And every community bank should be using this platform. Period.

Here are some of the features they’ve included:

• An anonymized database of the technology stack of every community bank in the U.S. This includes things like: core, internet banking, mobile, mortgage, P2P, etc. (Crazy, I know, but that’s how awesome these guys are!)
• Once you register, they tell you what your bank’s technology stack is and you’ll be asked to confirm that.
• Here’s where the magic starts: When you start thinking about changing one of your tech offerings, the platform can tell you what solutions will integrate with your other technologies. So instead of having to go through that painful process yourself, the platform will reduce a list of dozens of vendors down to 4-5 options in seconds rather than weeks – MIND BLOWN!!
• The platform will also tell you what your peers are using along with some of their financial metrics like their efficiency ratio. You get the answer to the golden banking question: “what are other banks our size doing for this?”
• A fintech directory to help with your search into those unchartered waters – and if you have questions, Dave and Tanner at FedFis know their stuff and are always happy to share!
• Educational material focused on community banking news and trends. Shameless plug: when you register, you’ll be able to find my presentation from back in January in the library!
• A social component with discussions grouped by topic, bank size, solution, etc.
• Exclusively for community banks; no vendors allowed.
• Did I mention it’s completely free?!

Have you ever had a situation where you're looking for new technology and you've selected a provider only to find out that it doesn't interface with your core or it doesn't work with your internet banking? Or maybe it does, but you have to go out and find a custom interface that costs money or pay interfacing fees to your core on top of it. Yeah, we've all been there.

I wish I had this when I was the IT officer at my community bank. And that's been almost a decade ago.

But it’s even more important today.

The reason this is so important and such a resource right now is that community banking is in the thick of a highly competitive landscape that threatens its very existence. To survive, your technology offering is going to have to be competitive. You can't just settle for your core solutions and say “good enough”.

If you don't have some sort of innovation, if you don't have some sort of differentiation, if you don't come to the table and take this stuff seriously, the innovators of the world are going to steal your customers. And we can’t let that happen. So, here’s what I want you to do:

1. Go to the Bankers Helping Bankers registration page: https://bankershelpingbankers.com/register/
2. Fill out your information and click submit
3. Once your registration is confirmed, go use the platform. Use it to learn, strategize, and make informed technology decisions.
4. Join the fight and do your part to save community banking!

Contacts and resources:

https://bankershelpingbankers.com/

https://www.fedfis.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-williston-vi-cae-aba4205/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-mayo-7731921/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fintechcowboys/