Kristy Carstensen

It has always been about the customer for me. No matter the size of the business, there is a reason to have your Treasury Consultant a part of your business's success. Sharing what others are doing within your industry, how to reduce DSO, or extend your days payable, we are able to partner with you and your business for success.

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Join me for my upcoming Treasury Management Workshop for Community Banks on May 21st from 9:00 am -3:30 pm CT in Eden Prairie, MN with Minnesota Bankers Association. The bankers of today must be “lenders” as well as “deposit gatherers.” Community banks are searching for ways to increase core deposits and non-interest fee income: Treasury Management is the answer. In this workshop, you will learn strategies to offer the right Treasury Management services your business customers need based on the value these services provide to businesses. You will walk away from this workshop with a deeper knowledge of Treasury Management, learn to conduct a TM Needs Assessment on your business account holders, and learn strategies to increase core deposits. You’ll also bring ideas back to your institution on how to market Treasury Management services to your ideal business account holders and ways your team can work better together knowing how critical each area is to the success of the implementation and sale of these services. Topics covered include: ✓ Maximizing the account analysis statement ✓ Treasury management products and benefits ✓ Identifying new products ✓ Treasury management integration with technology, operations, marketing, and sales teams ✓ Marketing and branding your treasury management products ✓ Organizational design for treasury management ✓ Incentivizing the sales teams ✓ Implementing treasury management products ✓ Choosing the right digital payment strategy ✓ Enhancing your products' security See you there! #communitybanking #treasurymanagement #businessbanking

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In the 10th issue of For All, I share thoughts on how economists should listen to the people we study and bring their thoughts into our work. There's a twist. https://lnkd.in/g8SKRuHT

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As payments fraud activity continues to trend upward, it’s increasingly important for business leaders to fight back. One critical tool that should be in your toolkit is positive pay: 

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💥 Congrats to Associated Bank for being ranked by J.D. Power as #1 for Retail Banking Customer Satisfaction in the Upper Midwest Region. 📽 Watch Associated Bank's Michael Tischer explains how Personetics is successfully partnering with the bank to boost customer engagement, increase sales, and empower the financial well-being of its customers. By partnering with Personetics, Associated Bank provides customers with "Money Monitor," a financial data-driven, hyper-personalized experience aligning with their digital-forward strategy. 🚀 In just one month since the launch of Money Monitor and its actionable insights, the results have been astounding with an impressive average rating of 4.4 (out of 5) for insights and a remarkable 30% digital engagement rate across the board. To learn more about Personetics's offering Contact us at https://lnkd.in/dBgCq4PG #Personalization #DigitalInnovation #CustomerInsights #Testimonial #ASB #finance #Fintech #personalization #customerengagement #financialwellness #mobilebanking #digitalbanking #customerexperience #moneymanagement

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💥 Congrats to Associated Bank for being ranked by J.D. Power as #1 for Retail Banking Customer Satisfaction in the Upper Midwest Region. 📽 Watch Associated Bank's Michael Tischer explains how Personetics is successfully partnering with the bank to boost customer engagement, increase sales, and empower the financial well-being of its customers. By partnering with Personetics, Associated Bank provides customers with "Money Monitor," a financial data-driven, hyper-personalized experience aligning with their digital-forward strategy. 🚀 In just one month since the launch of Money Monitor and its actionable insights, the results have been astounding with an impressive average rating of 4.4 (out of 5) for insights and a remarkable 30% digital engagement rate across the board. To learn more about Personetics's offering Contact us at https://lnkd.in/dBgCq4PG #Personalization #DigitalInnovation #CustomerInsights #Testimonial #ASB #finance #Fintech #personalization #customerengagement #financialwellness #mobilebanking #digitalbanking #customerexperience #moneymanagement

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In this Making Cents short, Signature Banker Kari Carlson has an insightful conversation with her mother, Susan, about the future of banking. Susan expresses her hope for the continued importance of personal touch in the industry. Watch the full episode at https://bit.ly/4ealUug!

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Austan Goolsbee, President of the Chicago Fed, described the bank’s mandate in the following way: “there is no bad weather, there is only bad clothing.” I think what he means is that the Fed’s job is not to “react”, but only “act” as govererned by its dual mandate of controlling inflation and maximizing employment. Perhaps, the limitation of the dual mandate is what creates instability in the economy. After all, keeping rates too low for too long created an excess of capital flowing into the markets chasing a return, which inflated the value of many assets. On the other hand, having the Fed try to navigate interest rates based on various economic indicators and forecasted outcomes would be disastrous.

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Another midwest bank merger only this one is larger. Are mergers becoming fewer and with larger banks? What does it mean to you, your job, your career, your company? ◾ The trends for 2023 for bank and credit union mergers: they were in the Midwest frequently, the acquired bank was under $200MM, the acquiring bank was under $10B, and the acquisition gained access to a new state. 🔷 Has there been one change in M&A for 2024? Are the size of insitutions involved getting larger? The earlier acquisition announcement this year by Capitol One of Discover is now followed by this slightly smaller merger. Wintrust is roughly $57B and Macatawa is roughly $2.7B. POST EDIT: Oh and FIVE (5) credit unions in Illinois announced their decision to merge (see article link in comments). Is this a start of a trend with Super Regional (say over $100B) and larger Regional banks (say over $10B) entering the M&A market as buyers and/or sellers? Will the difficult political environment (see link to post on political pressures against mergers in comments section) enter into these larger mergers being approved? Will credit unions continue to increase their pace of mergers? Do banks under $10B (and their employees) now become targets? Are credit union mergers entering a period like the 1990's was for banks with a big up tick in the number of them? #mergersacquisitionsdivestitures #mergersandacquistions #mergers #bankingindustry #bankingandfinance #banking #creditunions #creditunion #job #career #careerdevelopment

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Appreciate this summary of one of the key insights from our new working paper (at Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute and at NBER) 👇

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NEW YORK–Chase Bank, the nation’s largest financial institution, is warning that if new rules capping overdraft fees on checking accounts and late fees on credit cards are enacted, those services are going to become significantly more expensive for consumers. It's a warning similar to one that credit unions have also been sounding ever since the proposals were made public by the CFPB, the Fed and others. #noninterestincome #cfpb #latefees #overdraftfees #consumerinterest #FRB

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While bank mergers have slowed credit union mergers continue to pick up steam. What does it mean to you, your job, your career, your company? If a bank does sell often times the buyer is a credit union. Here are some questions to consider as we all try to understand this growing trend: 🔹 Will their members approve all these mergers or will more be like the Centra -Hoosier Hills merger that was voted down (see article in comments) by its members? 🔹 Will they continue to buy more community banks where the members can't vote them down and they get commercial and treasury acumen (see post in comments section)? 🔹 Where will the must have size for a credit union be to in order to survive in this new age? 🔹 Will credit unions be able to maintain their non-profit status as they become more bank like? What culture fits your goals best a bank or a credit union? Are the differences becoming smaller? How can your company hire strong talent from credit unions in this process and take advantage of the opportunity? #mergersacquisitionsdivestitures #mergersandacquistions #mergers #bankingindustry #banking #banks #creditunions #creditunion #career #careerplan #jobsearch #jobgrowth #growth #businessbanking #commerciallending #treasurymanagement

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What a great day at the Indiana Bankers Association Mega conference! Absolutely aligned with the theme of #Change #Engage #Evolve. I started the day in a great session by Kendra Ramirez with the focus on #ArtificialIntelligence. There was a lot of initial reaction in the room from bankers that lean toward AI being a negative factor in our industry. I loved how Kendra made it very clear that AI is no different than the Internet, the prolificaton of mobile phones, and I’ll take it once step further, just with the introduction of PCs, in terms of helping progress the effectiveness of bankers. She had a great quote that “#AI is not coming for your job, it is coming to your job”. She called out some great tools, mini which we are already using, but if you’re not using you need to consider them like Microsoft Copilot, Tango, and HeyGen just to name a few. I think the best of us that she had was when it came to AI, #StayCurious. We are all learning and as long as we take responsibility for the AI will be fine. As I said, totally aligned with the theme of change, engage, and evolve. Great sessions also today by Giulio Camerini from Crowe and Luke Mikles from the Baker Group on the impact of the current rate market and how to address interest rates and credit risk. The biggest take away that I had from these sessions was that banks absolutely have to consider scenarios that they never considered in the past. If your bank does not change how they look at interest rates, and the risks associated with that you simply won’t be able to engage with customers, profitably, and evolve. Some really engaging #fintech demos today as well. Finli showed how important it is to engage with small business owners and meet them with their needs as a financial institution. IntraFi’s Erich Buckenmaier did an amazing job calling out how banks need to look at asset and fund management totally different than they have in the past. With IntraFi’s technology banks can absolutely have better control over liquidity, the cost of funds, and the make up of their balance sheet. The team from KlariVis hit on the point I absolutely geek up on, #LoanPricing and #Profitability with the new profitability capabilities that they demonstrated today. Kim Snyder and her team definitely has something going on that every bank needs to look at. if you’re not leveraging your data to understand your profitability at the Banker, the branch, and every other segment within your organization, you truly not giving yourself a chance to evolve and grow those individuals and assets. And the last Fintech demo today was from Neural Payments and I was blown away by the simplicity and the stickiness that their P2P can offer to a bank. Allowing in one payment to have access to options like Venmo, Zelle® , Coinbase and others is just again meeting the payment/payer/recipient where they are and not making them choose where to go. Fantastic breakout sessions, and looking forward to tomorrow.

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Key to the success in rolling out that great new tool for your account holders is increasing awareness to drive adoption. Larky can help with proven strategies (and case study examples). Drop me a note to set up a few minutes to learn more.

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Great article- take a couple of minutes to read it - especially if you have a leadership role at you financial institution. “The role of leadership in creating a Culture of Compliance cannot be overstated. Leaders have the unique ability to inspire, guide, and shape the attitudes and behaviors of their teams.” Great quote from the article 👏🏼

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The 2024 Women Lead Change conference knocked it out of the park this year. Key takeaways: 1) OWN your superpower (often something that came out of challenge when you were 5-10 years old and has also been your "too much" of "this" comment from others often enough); 2) Alone you may go fast but TOGETHER we will always ALL go FURTHER; 3) If you're fearing something, get curious, listen to your heart/mind/gut connections and get that thing into one of these buckets: a) You can control it; manage it (this is a small bucket); b) You can influence it (medium sized bucket, get curious); c) LET IT GO and empty that bucket! (It's your biggest bucket, don't let it suck your energy and LET IT GO.) #IWLC #womenempowerment #Superwoman #community #curiosityoverfear

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People in general want to feel like the work they do adds value. So often those mundane, manual tasks feel more like a chore than a value add. Automating the mundane tasks can create a win-win of higher employee satisfaction while they focus on more revenue generating activities.

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