Happy Friday!!!
WOWZA what a week!!!! I am writing this literally as we are wrapping up our conference – The Roundup presented by FedFis 🤠. I promise a bit of a summary of The Roundup happenings next week (spoiler alert – it was AMAZING with an overall consistent theme of “compliance, community, and commerce”), but for now – Here is the Uncle Sean Update for 11/3/23:
- It’s Fed Week!!! As widely expected, the FOMC unanimously voted to hold rates steady at the current range of 5.25% – 5.50% where it has been since July. However, quantitative tightening continues (QT – a/k/a “shrinking the Fed Balance Sheet”) related to reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities at the current rate of $60B in Treasuries and $35B in MBS per month per the policy implementation note. CNBC has a good summary as always. Keep in mind that the next meeting is scheduled for Dec 12-13 and will include the ever-entertaining Summary of Economic Projections (“dot plot” for us older folks).
- If you really want to dig deeper, here is:
- Chairman Powell transcript (26 pages)
- Press conference video (51:28)
- Meanwhile, the BLS issued their October Jobs Report showing job growth of 150,000 (estimate was 188K; and down sharply from September’s jaw dropping 300K – which includes a downward revision of 39K). Unemployment ticked up to 3.9% (expectation was 3.8% which was last month actual).
- If you really want to dig deeper, here is:
- Happy to share a good plug here – the CFPB Selects FedFis Data!!! NICE!!!
- And more good news as the Bankers Helping Bankers (BHB) Fund welcomes four new community bank investors – Fannin Bank, Dream First Bank, Ozona Bank, and Generations Bank are the latest to join the BHB Fund as limited partners.
- Side note… I finally got the chance to hang out and talk with Richard Leggett and Neeraj Vohra from the BHB Fund (Latitude38 Venture Partners) – a great time with some REALLY great people!!! 😊
- The White House issues AI EO (I’m certain there’s an Old MacDonald joke there, but I digress 🤣😂)…. CNBC has a good summary.
- 👀 Per an SBA announcement earlier this week, Funding Circle joins Arkansas Capital Corp. and Alaska Growth Capital BIDCO as the first non-depository institutions to be granted new Small Business Lending Company licenses in 40 years.
- BankProv has selected Cable to enhance the banks financial crime compliance program with Cable’s all-in-one financial crime effectiveness testing platform.
- Intuit is shutting down Mint by January 1, 2024 while encouraging a shift for those users to the Credit Karma platform it acquired in 2020.
- Neu (financial wellness for students) announced the launch of the Neu Card (a Visa charge card CC) to help college students build credit without falling into the debt trap.
- And not too much of a surprise here, but the jury quickly found SBF guilty on all charges and is now facing up to 115 years in prison.
- Some interesting personnel moves:
- The Clearing House (TCH) announced that payments industry expert, Margaret Weichert has been hired as Chief Product Officer.
- PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) announced Jamie Miller has been named as Chief Financial Officer.
- Notable FinTech funding for the week:
- Charlie (neobank targeting older Americans) raised $23M in Capital consisting of $16M in Series A plus another $7M debt facility. Charlie intends to use the funding to accelerate growth and “launch industry-first financial fraud protections specifically designed for the unique needs of older Americans.”
- Payroll Integrations (“financial wellness as a benefit” tools platform) raised $20M in Series A funding round.
- EarlyBird (app that allows friends and family to gift investments to children via UGMA custodial account) raised $4.5M in extended Seed round.
Random Uncle Sean stuff:
- Special shout out to our baby girl, Claire – who turns 19 today (how is that even possible???)!!! Happy Birthday, Claire – Mom and Dad love you and we are super proud of you! 💕 🎂🎉
- ⏰ Don’t forget to set your clocks back this Saturday night as daylight savings time comes to an end (technically at 2 AM local time Sunday Morning)….
- Congratulations to the Texas Rangers for winning the MLB 2023 World Series in a spectacular game 5 victory (and becomes the first MLB team to win 11 straight playoff games away from home – that’s amazing)!!!!
- As we wrap up our Roundup conference, this weeks classic Dad Jokes are brought to you by Jeremy Neuharth with Sycorr:
- A banker friend told me to put something away for a rainy day….. I’ve gone for an umbrella. 😊
- This banker I know has absolutely no friends… I think he is “loanly”…
- What’s the hardest part bout being addicted to banking? The withdrawals!!! 😝
Have a GREAT weekend and please stay safe!!!
Uncle Sean
