News

Through the first two quarters of the year, Oklahoma banks earned $720 million at the end of June 2017. Earnings to date are well ahead of bank earnings at this same point in 2016 and are $32 million ahead of the previous record year (2015).  Total assets have grown to $114 billion (roughly $11 billion ahead of last year) while …

An OBA Update late last month carried a report about a joint effort by the Texas Bankers Association and the Independent Bankers Association of Texas to help raise money for the Houston flood. The two banker advocacy groups expressed their heartfelt angst, thoughts and prayers for those communities that have been devastated by the recent hurricane. TBA and IBAT were …

Greetings from Guy By Guy Sims OBA Chairman From a banking standpoint, things are quiet in Washington – not only because of the August recess but also because the banking agenda is far down the list of priorities for the administration and Congress at this point.  Somehow, we need to come up with a strategy to get our issues back …

Greetings from Guy By Guy Sims OBA Chairman At the convention this spring, I was optimistic the community banking industry would be on offense by this point pushing for common-sense regulatory reform in Washington D.C.  As it stands today, we’re not even on the field with our issues.   The congressional calendar is full for the foreseeable future. Raising the …

OBA President and CEO Roger Beverage recently crafted a well-worded rebuttal concerning overdraft fees in response to a recent article in Bloomberg’s Businessweek magazine. The rebuttal ran in today’s NonDoc news website as an op-ed piece from Beverage. You can visit the story by clicking here.

Greetings from Guy By Guy Sims OBA Chairman Editor’s Note: Guy is out of town this week and will be back with his chairman update next week. In the meantime, however, enjoy a couple of photos he shared from his motorcycle trip to Sturgis during the past week! Back to top   Operation Choke Point: to be or not to …

The Oklahoman published an article in its business section on Tuesday, Aug. 8, discussing overdraft fees (you can read the article, behind a subscription paywall, by clicking here). OBA President and CEO Roger Beverage wrote a letter to the editor/op-ed piece in rebuttal to this story, explaining why banks have these overdraft fees and why they are necessary to the banking …

Greetings from Guy By Guy Sims OBA Chairman The White House was relatively quiet this past week: No berating the administration’s own attorney general, no red meat political speech to the Boy Scouts of America, relatively few early morning tweets and no major staff shake-ups. I would call this a calm week by President Trumps standards.  I have to think the …

Most bankers are aware the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put forth a Request for Information that deals with the small business lending market. In particular, the Bureau wants information about current practices as they relate to small businesses that are minority- or women-owned. This request comes about because Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank has mandated bankers compile, maintain and report …

To help with our bankers’ future planning, we’ve set the dates and locations for the upcoming Bankers’ Night Out events for the fall season. These events are valuable opportunities for bankers to network with peers and gain insight on happenings in the industry. There are six stops scheduled, including a new addition to our regular list of locations: Stillwater. All …