Jon Sisk and Matt Lujano's banks couldn't be more different at first appearance — Sisk is a top executive at a community bank in Santa Cruz, California, near the beating heart of America's tech ecosystem, and Lujano leads a bank primarily based in a rural area of western Iowa where farming is dominant. But they share a positive outlook on the role of tech in community banking. As chair and vice chair, respectively, of ABA's Community Bankers Council, they reflected on what it means to be a tech-forward community bank in a podcast following the committee's recent D.C. meeting. Among other topics, they discuss:

• Forming AI brainstorming groups within banks to facilitate collaborative innovation.
• The use of generative AI tools to accelerate policy development and exam preparedness.
• Being ready to move quickly on stablecoins, tokenized deposits and digital assets, even if customers aren't demanding solutions.
• Good ideas surfaced in conversations among CBC members.

Stay tuned for more conversations on tech-forward community banking within the ABA Banking Journal Podcast channel.

The Erie Canal — one of the biggest milestones of American history — celebrated the bicentennial of its completion this week. On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, acclaimed economic historian and Banking Journal columnist John Steele Gordon and editor-in-chief Evan Sparks discuss the canal's development and construction, the involvement of the Savings Bank of New York in financing it, how it transformed New York and the Midwest, and how the canal created future demand for mass transport of goods by other means, helping fuel the republic's development as a commercial powerhouse.

Blend's Intelligent Origination — an AI-powered orchestration layer embedded in Blend's platform that reduces the cost of loan origination, improves speed and accuracy, and redefines how lenders and borrowers experience the lending process.

PNC Bank is the nation's eighth-largest bank by assets and the sixth-largest by deposits, but it ranks fourth in the number of physical branches. In a time when many banks are streamlining their in-person service locations, why has PNC doubled down on branches? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, PNC executive Jeff Martinez explores:

• The role of branches in marketing and account acquisition, particularly business accounts.
• PNC's strategy of combining organic growth and M&A (most recently in Colorado with FirstBank).
• Professional opportunities created for bank employees through the in-person delivery network.
• The role of personal touches — down to thank-you notes and branded umbrellas — in reinforcing the bank brand through the client experience.

With equipment repair costs up 40% over the past few years, how farmers deploy expensive agricultural machinery is of top concern for ag bankers. With equipment increasingly complex and often software driven, many equipment manufacturers have limited the ability of operators to repair their equipment without voiding warranties — leading to delays and lost harvests as farmers wait for service amid a shortage.

While this trend has led to a "right to repair" movement in many states, the issue of equipment costs and lost revenue during breakdowns remains a factor in lending decisions, says Pat Kussman, president and CEO of Regional Missouri Bank and chairman of the Missouri Bankers Association. "There are many things that are eroding at our cash flow for our farmers," he notes, "not just input costs, but land rent costs and equipment repair costs."

Kussman also discusses the state of the used equipment market, how farmers are using drones to manage crops less invasively and the growing role of artificial intelligence tools in functions like disease identification

This episode is presented by Agri-Access.

• Register for the ABA Agricultural Bankers Conference, Nov. 12-14 in St. Louis

Banks have been using natural language processing and machine learning applications for years in managing their anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act obligations. But how does the growing adoption of generative AI tools affect how BSA and fraud professionals protect their banks? On the latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast — presented by Agri-Access — former FDIC official Lisa Arquette shares a regulator's-eye view of generative AI in the BSA world and how regulators have been approaching the technology for their own work.

Joined by ABA SVP Heather Trew, Arquette also discusses:

• The state of play on banks' beneficial ownership reporting obligations.
• Other elements of implementing the AML Act of 2020.
• How regulators weigh AML/BSA performance when approving mergers and acquisitions.
• Fluctuations in AML/BSA compliance investments through the economic cycle.
• The low number (1%) of BSA-related examinations at the FDIC that result in enforcement actions.

Register for the ABA Financial Crimes Enforcement Conference, Oct. 14-16 in Arlington, Virginia.

In the wake of the summer's Genius Act, many banks and nonbanks have announced new stablecoin initiatives. Another digital asset — tokenized deposits — may meet needs similar to stablecoins, but the two asset types have significantly different features based on their underlying designs. On this episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast, ABA experts Brooke Ybarra and Yikai Wang discuss:

• The key differences between stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
• Risks that widespread payment stablecoin adoption poses to community bank lending.
• Use cases for payment stablecoins (and areas where hype might exceed value).
• How U.S. banks are approaching stablecoin and tokenized deposit pilots.