Best Banking Practices with Bryan Lawrence

Welcome to Accountants LawPod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhardt.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And we have a very special guest today and a very important topic as well, because this is something we run in with attorneys all the time because they have sensitive data and we can go all into that. But it's, we're calling this one best practices Best Banking Practices with Brian Lawrence. So welcome, Brian Lawrence.

Nice to see you. Thank you.

And I'll let Sarah do the intro. So be ready. Maybe you might want to do this 'cause you are related.

He's the comedian in our family.

Yeah.

We get to, I often refer to him as my brother-in-law even though he's married to my cousin technically. But you know, when your mom's a twin, everybody's your family. So you just get adopted. Folks. But yeah, Brian is, um, we, we kind of chastise him a bit because he had a little small breakup with Nicole, so he never made it to our wedding. And so he gets a lot of riff on that. Um, but overall, I mean, we just— it's such a lovely time to spend having you here and knowing the wealth of knowledge that you have because you've been in the industry of banking overall for quite some time and just having you here and sharing your knowledge from a perspective that's kind of neutral with the perspective of a banker is nice to have because we get a lot of people in our field that have beat up that kind of industry at times or love, fall in love with the industry. Oh, it's so amazing. They helped us so much. And it's like a yo-yo. So I love having you here to help us kind of demystify a few things and—

Thank you.

And obviously your first time meeting Steve as well. So welcome.

Welcome to the podcast, Brian. We're glad to have you here.

Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. So, yeah, so Brian Lawrence, I am a senior relationship manager in the banking industry and that's just a fancier word for I'm a business banker. I work with clients that are a little bit bigger than small business. So it's more of $10 million up to $75 million in clientele. As far as top line revenue. And I work with a client management team of financial partners that I work with in my office that range from treasury partners, credit partners, merchant services, financial life benefits that then leads into private wealth for owners that they want to bring over their personal assets as well. And so I've been in the banking industry since 2001, so a very long time. I've kind of had an array of— different channels, if you will. So I started off as a personal banker. I was a personal banker for years, and then I was in branch management. I was in that for years. And then I've now been in business banking for, gosh, 13 years. So since 2010. So it's been a long time.

And—

Wow. Yeah.

Just coming to the podcast will help you remember your legacy here.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, happy to be here. And I think, Sarah, you've touched on it a little bit. you know, the banking industry, much like some of the clients that you guys work with, like law firms, or whether it's the police, the banking industry, insurance, you go through these ups and downs of I love them, hate them. And so I think that's a, that's a pivotal piece to chat about, especially in today's day and age, especially with the fraud and the things that come up and the relationships that you build with your banker. And vice versa, the relationships I built with my clientele, I think to help stop this because in an, in an, in an era right now with AI, which is coming on very strong. And that's not, I mean, that's the thing that's here. And so for some it's great, for some it's scary, or it's a little bit of all of the above. You're running into this time in, in, in history where we don't have time for anything and we see all these quick hits that come through, whether it be our iWatch or Apple Watch or.

Mm-hmm.

Our phones, our emails, and everything's like a quick, oh, I gotta click that. And a lot of us don't stop and think, oh, what am I, why am I clicking that? And I see it a lot, just in like every day if we order something just from Amazon, then 3 days later I'll get a text message from UPS that says why my package didn't arrive. And I'm obviously thinking that this has to be legit because I just ordered something. Mm-hmm. And so, but before I click, I have to kind of stop and think like, well, they might have just sent this out to thousands of people hoping somebody clicks. So happy to be here. Happy to chat about this topic. I know that Sarah, you and I have talked about this a lot and it's scary. The amount of fraud that's happening right now, especially in this industry, is very, very high.

Well, I'm curious too, 'cause I, I feel this way in just conversations with business owners. The relationships with banking and the business banker has so shifted. Some of us are dealing with a banker that's not even in the state that we're in, that we're assigned to somebody else in a different state, and that makes it hard. I know that right now where you're at in your career, you're at the higher tenure the higher level of it. But in that kind of medium size, that smaller size space, it does feel like we have to help educate how do you build these relationships so that it's not this just on and off switch, like, oh, I need it now, like flooding in. It's you have to foster a relationship with someone. And I think on the on-site, on the other side of it is the consumer side of it is where you're starting to see so much change. Mm-hmm. How do you know what you're doing? Like, is it the branch that you focus on? Like, what? Just on that side, because when these moments happen for fraud, you do feel like you're lost in a portal of phone calls and just frightening. Like, where do I start? Do I call the IRS and tell them I had fraud? Like, what do I do?

Kind of moment. Yeah.

So how do you, what do you think of that? Like, where do you think that relationship should be?

Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. And it is weird because now I am at a level of my career where, you know, I left a bank that I had 70 clients, which sounds like a lot. And to service 70 clients is a lot. That's a lot. And I moved to a bank now in which I work at where I don't have 70 clients, I have 15. And the goal is to grow 3 per year. So over the next 10 years I'll have, with 45 if I hit those goals. And so it's a very manageable portfolio that I have to, to manage just because of the numbers and the partners that I do have around. But to your point, for the smaller size companies, when they're in a branch level type business banking platform, you know, those business bankers will have anywhere from 100 to 300 clients.

Wow.

And so, It is harder, and industry's changed, right? Because everything now is online, you know. Yeah, everybody on this call probably rarely, if ever, walks into a branch. And I know for years that was, you know, customers would come in, and because, you know, you remember the days we'd go in on Friday night to cash our check. And then, you know, 25 years ago, when, you know, automatic deposits started happening, nobody did that. We're running to the bank to get there before it closed. And, and so everything is automated. And so I guess what I would say is, yeah, it's a little bit harder, I think, if you're, if the business is smaller, but they do have business bankers in the branch that I feel like if you can kind of break down those walls of, oh, it's the bank, they're just out to get me. And I'm not saying the bank's just here to make money. That's not a secret. Just like the companies you work with are there to make money.

Mm-hmm.

But I think that people have this perception that, oh, the big bad banks, they just want to make money and they just want my money in there. And not that that's— there's not some truth to that, but the people that work inside the bank aren't the people that are making all of the money off of the client.

Yeah.

And they do make money off of the products that they sell. However, I think genuinely most of those people want to have that relationship. And I think it's tough when you're in the branch and you have 100 to 300 clients on a business platform. It's, it's, it's tougher to engage and say, let me take you out to dinner. Let me take you to a ballgame. And those are some of the things that I get to do because I have a corporate card, and I can take out people that, you know, I want to get to know and bring over their business. And the small business bankers have that same thing, and maybe it's just not on that level or that scale. But they do still want to have a relationship with the client.

Yeah.

And the client, I think, also has to figure out a way to not have that guard up, if you will, as this is the bank and they're out to get me. But how do I build that relationship with that banker that sits in the branch? Now, the issue, kind of what you were just talking about, Sarah, with that is the branch sometimes tends to be a revolving door. So you have a banker that you work with that's awesome, and then 6 months later, they're so awesome, they got promoted. To be a higher-level banker. And then you get the new person in and then you kind of start all over. And so it is, it's a tougher industry than it used to be. You know, 30 years ago we'd walk into the branch and there'd be, you know, the person that was the teller that's been there for 20 years.

Mm-hmm.

And it's just not the case anymore. So I think as we adapt in the era that we're in, you have to, especially with the relationship building, but you also have to adapt from a technological standpoint, and I think most businesses have. But when your banker is talking about certain fraud protections for your bank accounts, you have to listen and you, you know, and you're automatically going to think, what do they get out of this? But what you get out of this, which is, yeah, you might have to pay a monthly service fee to have positive pay or ACH debit block. to be able to put these things in motion. Because let's face it, the people that are stealing from everybody are 5 steps ahead of everybody.

Yes.

And so even I have clients, I had a client that had a $4,000 fraud check claim about a month and a half ago. And, and every client, and this is not a good or bad thing, but every client's kind of like, well, what did you do to protect me? And that's a valid question. But the other question is, what did you do to protect you? You know, did you have these fraud services in place? Do you have, you know, a— something at your work where you guys determine who gets to authorize wires and ACHs and what's coming through? And in a day and age where if you write a check, we all know this, you write a check and maybe you remember way back when checks would have your name, phone number, address. There was even a time when your Social Security number was on your check.

Yeah. Yeah.

Your driver's license number was on your check.

And now—

Are you trying to help out Lynda and Steve? Yeah.

Trying to help out Lynda and Steve.

Oh, I was thinking of you.

Even I remember that.

I remember that too as a child.

I was in the military, and that was how we identified whenever we walked into any military base. We would give our military ID and it would have your, your Social Security.

Yeah. Well, you know, we run into with attorneys— jump in here, Lynda and Sarah— but my experience in the many years I've worked with attorneys, you know, they're trained to ask lots of questions and not trust people. And I see this, this happen over and over where they begrudge the bank their fees. They're like, why are they charging me these fees? And I think to myself, It's customer service. Why are you charging the fees that you're charging to your clients? Then number 2, along with that, getting them to go to a bank who really knows how to handle the trust accounts. And as an example, the other day we had one of our clients get a $2 million settlement and it was with a smaller bank and they were just giving her this huge runaround and she couldn't understand why it was taking so long to clear the funds. And, you know, her comment was, I'm going to switch banks. And it's hard for us to explain to them why some of these things are happening. And to your point, when, when there's a lot of revolving doors with the staff, it's hard to get through and figure all that out.

Sure. Yeah. Why? It's interesting because I've had— it's a fine line for us as well, right? So I will have clients, right, where there'll be a big ACH coming out and I will get an email alert from my back office that says, just double-check on this, make sure that this is legitimate, and I'll call the client because it's— because it's to protect the client. Yeah, the client will immediately think, what a pain in the ass.

Yeah.

Why are you calling me for this? And I've had clients in the past where I've called and I've— and they've said, just call my controller. So I called the controller, and this specific incident, it was about a $30,000 ACH. And the controller's like, yeah, of course it's fine. Just let it go through. And I hit the button and 10 minutes later I get a call from the owner.

Ah.

And she's like, that wasn't legit. So we had to scramble. We were able to catch it. We were able to get it back.

Mm-hmm.

But then I was read the riot act of you should have called me. And I, and, and so I'm stuck in this position of I don't want to inconvenience you cuz you told me yesterday to call the controller. To protect you. And then when I do call the controller and it's wrong and you get mad that I didn't call you. So, and that's just a people thing, right? We do that in every aspect of our life. We walk in, you're buying a car, you walk in with your guard up because the sales guy is going to try to—

Yeah, yeah.

Get over on you. And even if you think about that industry, car sales today versus 30 years ago when there was this huge upswing on how they could kind of pull the wool over your eyes. And there's just not that anymore. You walk into a dealership now, you already have all the specs on the car, you've pulled up the, you know, accident report, you know what it is, you know what they bought it for. And so even, you know, they're going to make money off of you, but you still walk in with that angst as if it was 1984. And we all expect for them to make money. I just don't want them to make 50%, you know. Yeah. And so I think it's the same thing with banking where we kind of come in depending on the day or the month or, you know, what's happening in banking and we automatically think that the banker's out to get us. And I think that just being in banking, that's just not the case. I don't ever want my clients to have fraud. I want them to have, I want them to spend their time doing what they do best, which is running their business.

Mm-hmm.

And hopefully the products that we have allow them to do that smoothly. Without any hiccups, but you still run into this fraud all the time. We had a wire go out a couple of months ago, $1.6 million. That was fraudulent.

Oh my goodness.

All of the checks and balances in place and the controller still was just gave it away. And, you know, and they still come back to us like, well, what did you do? Why did you allow this? And we're like, there's 7 different steps for you guys to get a wire. This big out, and you guys passed all 7 of them. Not that there's 7, but there's 2 or 3 steps that need to take. And, but it's scary because these guys are that good.

Do you think with artificial intelligence it's just going to get worse because it's pretty bad now?

I think so. I think that the banks will, I think the fraud attempts and the level of sophistication is going to get worse. But I'm hoping that, you know, the banks spend tens of millions of dollars every year on cybersecurity, right? I mean, if you think about what we have to protect from our clients compared to other industries, we have to have, we have to spend this type of money to stay as close to ahead of the game as possible. But yeah, I think it's going to get more sophisticated. I think there's going to be more people that, you know, are going to hear the voice on the other side of the phone that they recognize that might not be the voice. And so I think there's going to have to be more things put in place You know, and I think just people just need to slow down is, is a big thing.

Mm-hmm.

That's a good point.

With the AI too, now they're able to copy your voice. So that's the other thing. And we were talking about this recently, Sarah and I were talking about it, that even with the staff, like somebody could literally call one of the staff and say, move this money for, you know, whatever. They're gonna pay us this big chunk of change, move this money. And if it sounds like our voice, they're gonna think it's ours. Now they'll know right away we didn't send it in our typical chat system, then that's kind of an odd place and they would probably question that. But you kind of have to have almost a safe word or some keyword that they can know that it's you. Because we're doing the podcast, somebody could copy our voices very easily, copy a lot of things that are us, which is the scary part of AI, I think, that you don't have to worry about.

Yeah.

And I think it's more texting too. Like, I think with texting, people are like, oh, that has to be real, as opposed to like, we all know the emails, you gotta look and see, and you can kind of spot a bad email, but with a text, it's probably really hard to notice it.

Oh, that's kind of one of the most recent things that's come to light in the news is some of this texting thing. And ironically, I was having a conversation last night with my mom and she said, well, because you trained me, and I was thinking back, like, it was a QuickBooks class that Byron Patrick, who's my dear friend and in the Accountant's Salon with us, he was teaching this class and he was saying, and it stuck with her from that moment forward. It could be a legitimate email, but if you really want to know what the message is, log into the platform to validate what that message is. And similar to what Brian's saying, those quick clicks— I mean, it's, it's a fury, right? They, they, they fear— they feverously give you stuff to click this, now do this, now do that, right? Where I was inquiring with Brian one day was on an ACH situation. I was like, okay, Zelle is inside a lot of banking platforms. Once it's gone, it's gone. Bye.

See you.

I was just gonna say, you've got Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, you've got all those outside vendors. Yeah.

But you've got an ACH, like what's a clawback on an ACH, right?

Right.

Well, there's some circumstances Brian was saying he could, some people are able to jump through hurdles, but really consider it gone. So yeah, you're right, Brian, in what does it cost you in peace of mind knowing you've put protocols in place as best as possible to do what you can to protect yourself? Because ultimately you have to look at yourself for some of these things. Like, and, and I don't understand, if we're going to value how much money we have sitting in a pooled IOTA account and we got to write checks off of it, is it really $30 a month is really—

It's a lot, right?

Like, you know what I mean? Or having protective accounts in front of it, like what we tend to call a sweep account, where you'd constantly leave it at a zero bank balance, but it sweeps into a proper account so it's front-facing. Because how many times do we see invoices go out with banking information right there?

How many emails do we get from them too? I mean, they just said, oh, here's my— I can't get the, I can't figure out how to get you a login with the bank. Here's my login and password.

In an email.

Yeah.

In an email.

Yeah.

Did you just email that to me? Like you email in a different email going, did you really just email me this stuff? Or are they routing numbers? I, yeah, it's—

Brian, if I, I'll, I'll never forget some of these stories when you're talking about the Wayback Machine when you were in the branch at times and you'd have people come in with their checks and they're—

Yeah.

Their overdraft fees. And I think what happens is the news has magnified some of the idiosyncrasies. Yes, the bank is there to make money, except they've done some stuff wrong in the past. Well, there comes that fork, that stabbing fork. Every time it gets in the news, I kind of crack up. I'm like, okay, here we go again.

Well, when was it, when was it that the Fed said, you'll know what I'm talking about, Brian. How long ago was it that they said, said that the money had to clear in such amount of time now. It used to take, sometimes a check would take a week and now it's like 24 hours. And you know, how did you guys deal with that? And oh my God, the mess that that must have created for banks at first.

Sure.

Yeah.

I can't remember, that was a while ago.

It was a while ago.

And don't quote me, I don't know if that was the Dodd-Frank Act, but there was an act that had come through that we were then regulated to essentially clear checks in a certain amount of time. And I think, To answer that question, I think that just the technology got better. It used to be you deposit a check, we, at the end of the day, the checks would get picked up and they'd go down to the central servicing center and then they'd do whatever they need to do to like, you know, cross-reference the checks and then make sure that we collect the money from the other bank. And I think the technology has gotten so much better because of that and since then, right? So now everything's, you know, a lot more banks are talking to each other. And so we can, we can know that those funds are there immediately. And you guys now have been in a position where you write a check at a store, not that anybody does, but every now and then there's a check you can write and they'll scan the check right there and hand it right back to you because they run it through as an ACH because you check the account number and your routing number. So, so, and that wasn't— I think it was like 7 to 14 days was the, was the timeframe that it happened.

That rings a bell.

Yeah. And then some checks are long. So then even if you throw kinks in there, if it's an international check, it's a check from Canada, it could take up to 45 days. And so that's another thing where clients are like, this is ridiculous. It's just Canada right there. We're in Washington. So it's just— and but those are certain hurdles.

Right there.

Yeah, it's right there.

It's right there.

But it's funny, you bring up Money orders are—

I hate to cut you off, Brian, but recently we've seen an uptick in money orders bouncing.

Yeah. And that's it. So money orders and cashier checks is another thing. When I was in the branch, people would walk in and go, well, this is tender that should be cashed right now. And that's not always the case because people are making fraudulent cashier checks and money orders. And so Yeah, it's, and you bring up the branch and the fraud that I've seen in the branch. I've had people come into the branch, and this is another thing where I think fraud is so personal. If you've ever had, we, Nicole and I have both had, or not both, when we were married, we're still married.

Yeah.

Early on in our marriage, we had, we had check fraud and I did a stupid thing. I had a bunch of checks that I, left in my car because I worked at the bank. I was going to take them to the bank and shred them. And they're from different accounts at different banks. And my car broke down, so I ended up not taking my car to work. Well, that night my car got broken into and I totally forgot about the books of checks that were in there. And this individual is writing checks around town for upwards of $10,000. And I'm getting all these calls from people and So you just— so it's very emotional, like when you get fraud, when fraud happens to you, if your car, if your car or house is ever broken into, it's very emotional. So when I was in the branch, I had a young lady come in. I'd say she was probably in her 30s, and she was on the phone with the IRS, and she's freaking out, and she's like, I need to get cashier's checks or money orders in the amount of $2,000 each, and I need 5 of them. I need $10,000 or something. And I'm like, well, who are you talking to? She's like, well, I'm talking to the IRS. And I was like, I'm like, well, who are the money orders supposed to be made out to? Yeah. She says Home Depot.

What?

I said, give me the phone. And this, this gal, she's like I said, she's in her 30s. She's not 90 years old. She's not, not— she's intelligent. She's crying. She can't believe she owes the IRS $10,000. I take the phone, the phone, the number that was calling from was 911. And I'm like, gosh, these are—

I remember these calls. Yeah.

I ended up talking to this guy and he was very belligerent and telling me to put the lady back on the phone, that she owes the IRS. And anyway, we went back and forth for minutes and then we hung up and he called back and then it said President Obama and all the things. And but I just finally, at the end of the conversation with Lynda, I said, ma'am, the IRS, one, isn't going to call you. And two, they would never have you get store credit, credit cards from Home Depot. But people just, like I said, it's so emotional that people get wrapped up. And now you're seeing love scams. I had a client of mine that was a CPA, actually. She had a practice. I banked her practice. And— She called me and she's like, Brian, I'm— I was scammed for $230,000 by somebody she had become in a relationship with. And they were close. He was having a bad time and she wired him almost a quarter million dollars. And so it just— these guys are getting better and better and they're trickier and trickier.

So, well, it's, it's interesting because I'm— the, the piece that came up and why it brought my attention is the elderly fraud conspiracy scheme that's going on. And it was 5 people, including caretakers, hairdressers, swindled money out of $200K from this elderly woman. So these are legitimate people through access of like Stripe, the things that are, are everyday. So then I think about these online banks that are solely online banks and I want to do business with just that bank. Okay, but what happens when a crisis happens? How do you get— like, what happens? You know, not that you want to run to a branch. Not every branch is available.

Sure.

But I constantly look at—

You want a person.

You want a person, or you have an institution that has legacy. I mean, I think B of A at the time was the first on the scene for some of the first of the online banking. Chase Bank, as of now, as far as Lynda and I were told, Chase Bank most recently will not open IELTS Trust accounts in the branch. It happens on a different level now. So to me, it's like, okay, your point is you got to get smart with it. It is frightening. It's so emotionally charged. But we have to put things in place to make ourselves in a safer place. Sharing a login with us is not our first ask ever.

Right.

We want to be protected. We don't want the ability to transfer unless we have an approval process. If banks don't offer those things, I'm not saying you have to move all of your bank accounts, but we need to value the relationship and what it is that we're trying to do. And ultimately, I mean, these are real life stories that you're seeing on your side and you're experiencing it from the deficit side. We're looking at it from the proactive side and I'm trying to figure out where's the middle? How do we get everyone to cross the line properly?

Yeah.

Because these are legit. Like it is, you're right. Super, super emotional. And to have— I mean, really, if you think about it too, is to have people's tax returns not go through because somebody else stole your identity.

Remember that client, Sarah, that I had that was not a lawyer, but he was an immigrant from like Sweden to here, had a business, he sold a product, and this person called him and said that if you don't give me this amount of money, and they said they were like from the IRS or from the federal government. That they were gonna take his property away from him. And so they instruct him to go to the bank. He went to the bank, he withdrew every penny they had and, and put it into gift cards, like to Target and different things like that. And he lost all, he had hundreds of thousands of dollars gone.

Yeah.

It was nothing he could do. And they just kept calling and they called his wife too and said, you know, you wanna have her not be able, they were gonna, sent her out of here too. And it was just really terrible. He lost everything. It was really, really sad. Yeah.

That's like what Brian was saying, like, yeah, coming in and— but I mean, I think the ultimate thing is, is if we're going to look through this lens, because it is an ever-changing thing and you can't just say, oh, I've got myself set up, I'm done. It's almost like I feel like you have to have, depending on where you are, if you're a small business or you're in the larger space, you have to revisit this, I think, in a more frequent kind of volume, I would imagine, right?

Absolutely. I think that's, I mean, that is 100% correct. You have to revisit this. I was thinking about this a few months ago. Braxton, my son who's 13, we were getting him a phone. And so I went into AT&T to get him a phone. And we all know when you're walking through the mall and the cell phone person's going, "Hey, who's your carrier with?" And you're too busy and you don't care and you're like, Next time, not interested, and you keep walking anyway. I'm at the AT&T store to buy him a phone, and the lady that was helping me, she was like, when's the last time you looked at your plan? And I said, oh my gosh, I don't know, it's been a long time.

Yeah.

Well, you're paying like $50 or $75 more than you should be, and we can upgrade your plan and you will be paying less and you'll have more. And that's like one of those examples of Oh, had I just stopped in the mall that one time when that person said, let's take a look at your plan. And it's the same thing with your insurance. It's the same thing with your banking. I think to your point, Sarah, it's an ongoing relationship that you have to like take a step back and look at. And not that we want this to override everything in our life, right? We don't want to walk around scared. But one of the things that I have on my personal accounts and people think that this is weird, And maybe it's weird, but it works for me. And I get a text message anytime that there is a dollar or more taken out of any of my accounts and/or my credit card. And people like—

I have the same thing. Yeah.

And people will think that, oh, you just want to track Nicole's spending. And that's the last thing on my mind. Nicole can buy whatever she wants.

It is funny.

I do call her out.

We have this on tape for Nicole.

Yeah, right, right. But it's not for that, it's because of fraud. And there was a situation where, I don't know if this is funny or embarrassing, there was over a $100 charge that came out of Victoria's Secret. And I thought, this is great, like, what'd you buy? And she's like, that wasn't me. Oh my goodness. And immediately I was sad. And immediately I thought, well, this is fraud. So I could call right then and there. But long gone are the days of wait for your statement to come in. And like, who looks at their statement? Nobody gets their statement via email. Not nobody, rarely anybody, or via mail and opens it up and goes with their highlighter, you know, let's take a look at what we spent. We don't do that anymore.

Can I just brag one minute? Because I couldn't believe this. Funny that you're saying this, Brian. Last night I walk into, uh, my son's room and he was showing me a spreadsheet and he says, oh, and he's got the monthly tabs on his Google Sheet. I said, is that your, your bank statement? Do you pull that down in a CSV? And he's like, yeah. And then I track all my spending. What? He highlights. I said, oh, and I'm kind of like leaning in. He's like, yeah, I see how much goes out. I'm like, that's an interesting term, go out.

And that's a QuickBooks term, remember? Money in, money out drives me crazy.

Yeah, it's funny though. And he had— and he goes, and this is the, the monies that I have, and then this is everything that's gone out. And I'm like, okay, you mean the money you spent, like McDonald's, right? Or something like that. You know, it's kind of— he's like, yeah, you know, I was kind of joking around, right? And, um, I sat back for a minute and I said, you do this voluntarily? And he goes, yeah, I don't wanna put it in a program. I'm, I'm teaching myself how to do this.

That's pretty smart.

That's good.

I was shocked. And it's funny cuz obviously Brian knows him, but I was shocked and I thought, okay, this is a generation that's growing up in all, this is all they know. Like this, this right here. Yeah. You know, thankfully he is a kid that knows that you can pause your TV He was in that one moment of time before the pauses. But I'm thinking to myself, all right, and he's sitting down and breaking this, and he had it color-coded and organized. And he says, well, I'm monitoring what I'm doing. And also in case, because I'm online, in case I have anything go out that's not correct. Oh, okay. I'm thinking, why don't you turn the alerts on? Right?

Yeah.

But still, I think that he wants to—

You have the alerts on, right?

Using it like an accounting program, right? He's trying to kind of—

Well, that's what I said.

He's learning the sides. That's actually a good thing. So the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

You have another future accountant in the family.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just, I say that because it surprised me. And here we are looking at the myriad of clientels that we have and all the different age groups that we have. And where people are wanting to see this, these funds go. And you're right, they're not looking, they don't look and examine their bank statements the way we would on a business level. But they're also, there's, like you said, Brian, I appreciate what you're saying. Like it's good for me, it may not work, it's a quirk that I have. It doesn't work for everybody. Everyone needs their own way to monitor things and it's finding that, that ability to do that.

And a lot of them use the bank feed though, don't you think?

Because— They just use the bank feed.

Back in me and Steve's day, we would get the, the person might open up the bank statement themselves and we'd make them sign off on it that they looked at it, like, put your signature on here so I know that you saw it and then go forward and do the work.

You mean you date stamp it and then—

yeah, yeah, you'd have them sign it, right, Steve? Would have them sign it so that way I knew that they were, that they were part of like viewing it, like we want ours to do too, because how many times have we had How many clients have we had so far, Sarah, that have had some kind of fraud on their trust account?

Oh.

Quite a few. And that's hard because they have to come up with the money to fix that if it's not found and replaced.

Well, we, you know, I'm not going to mention the organization, but you guys know which organization I belong to, my travel organization. And we had a PayPal account and we were dinged for about $16,000 in fraud in the PayPal account. It took us almost 3 months of trying to figure out who to talk to, how to get the money. They just froze everything. We had our cash flow was affected. It was just a giant nightmare. And, you know, I finally sold the board on switching and dropping PayPal. It was like, we need to take control of this, get it in a bank here, you know, real bank. Real bank. And, you know, the other night we were— you've probably seen this. All of us have seen this. I was in a meeting, in a Zoom meeting, and my job was to order 50 pizzas for this event that we're doing. And the next thing I know, my email is flooded with emails from Pizza Hut and Domino's. What is that?

You know? Well, you know, that extra step though, and that's the thing I think Brian was saying, and I totally agree. What does it cost you the extra step to verify that the transaction happening is happening? You know what I mean? Like, It's the—

My bank just— it's free.

Yeah, no, but I'm just saying like for some people though, for what I'm saying on the business side, it feels a little bit like all we hear is data breaches quite a bit, how to protect ourselves, fraud, how we're getting scammed. And I totally agree, Brian's right.

Oh yeah, you'll see your insurance company all of a sudden is breached and you worry about, oh my God, do they have all my information out there now? Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's just—

Or you get these ads for—

It's going to get harder. And we have to be more— I mean, I guess it's kind of a moment for us to take in. It's okay. What are your relationships? Who are you banking with?

But the banks have gotten really good at, you know, the information. I have a friend that was in information technologies at one of the big banks, and he was the one that, you know, he told me about, make a password. And I hate these long passwords. He goes, make it a sentence that you'll remember.

Oh wow.

And I think that, you know, and then throw a little number on it that you like and whatever code. But he was telling us, and what I'm amazed at too is that like I got a text or an email, I think I got both from my bank and it was like, we think this is fraudulent. And I looked at it and I'm like, I didn't do this. I waited for my husband to come home. I'm like, did you charge these things? And he's like, I don't know what that is. I didn't wanna stop something that I thought maybe he did or it had a different name. Like you ordered something but it came under a different name.

And I looked like, no, this— Coded as something else.

Yeah, coded as something else. Yeah. So it just didn't know what it was. And then I called the bank and they handled it beautifully.

Yeah.

And stopped it and we got our money back and it was absolutely fraud. And they must have had some trigger that they knew. It wasn't even for a lot of money. It was a small, like $120 or something. It wasn't a lot of money, but still, I mean, you know, you don't wanna lose that. And it was 2 transactions that they found, not, not even me, they found it. And I was like, wow. That's pretty cool that they're able to do that and spot it so easily.

So Brian, do you have your arms around a number for us? How much money banks lose on fraud every year? You know, I mean, how much are you guys having to—

Wait, let him go to Google.

Yeah.

It's a lot. I don't know the exact number.

It's a lot.

And is that insured?

Yeah.

Okay. And who, is that federally insured or is that a, Do banks go out and buy insurance policies for this? I believe it is.

Don't quote me. I believe it's federally insured, but it might not be. But the banks do take into account, I mean, there's going to be losses every year and there's—

How do you forecast that?

Yeah.

How do you budget that in the bank?

Yeah, it's—

Yeah, I mean, it's probably—

That's way above my pay grade.

Yeah.

That's what it is. But there are financial analysts that every year you know, depending on what's going on with, say, the union is and what we have to, I guess, be able to set aside for that. And I'm sure that's federally regulated because we are regulated to keep certain balances and what we can lend versus the balances that we have, especially after 2008. So there's a lot more federal regulations for big banks. The regional banks, I think, are managed a little bit differently. And then the credit unions are managed even differently than that.

Yeah.

Well, Dodd-Frank kind of jumped on the big banks, didn't it? And then some of that has been pulled back in recent years.

I think so. It's been pulled back a little bit because I think there were a lot of things that were like overreach, overstep.

Yeah.

There were a lot of good things that came out of that too. Like you guys talked about earlier, like overdrafts. And we're living in a time in banking now where if you overdraft your account, it's almost your fault. Because there's all of these things set up. You're gonna be able to have your card decline unless it's a check or something weird that, that once again, nobody's writing checks.

Oh no, they still do.

Well, I mean, personally, it's, you don't see much.

Lawyers do.

Remember we used to have a wire?

Lawyers do. You're right.

Yeah. I barely even know where the darn thing is. I was asked the other day for one and I was like, you, you want me to—

I know. It's like, do I even have one?

Yeah.

But then like—

I had to write one too and it sits in, I'm like, where's the check? Where's the check? Don't do it. I don't wanna do it.

When you write it, it's like, is this my handwriting?

I'm curious, Brian, in your experience, I know you're on the higher level, but you probably have different level of, like, within the banks itself, the training format is obviously gonna be different for what you're dealing with versus what a branch level is probably gonna deal with on a day-to-day. Have you noticed a big change in your training? Like, have they changed the training criteria quite yet?

No? No.

No.

No, but I mean, they train, They train us equally the same. It's the same training. Sure.

Okay.

Okay.

And so, but the branch sees things differently than we do, right? They see a lot more in-person people trying to do check fraud face to face.

Which is shocking.

And so, which is different from what I see, right? It's usually malware or somebody's phishing or smishing or romance scam and wire scams, ACH scams. So it's, I don't see it face to face. So the branch is, is, they are trained exactly the same. I think that we just have more things in place, more products in place to help prevent that.

Yeah.

You talked about earlier, you know, as far as people looking at their accounts and back to money is so emotional, whether it's good or bad, right? So people have that don't have a ton of money or living paycheck to paycheck, they don't want to look at those statements because it's depressing. Or people that have— or it's tough, right? It's a tough conversation with your spouse, you know, to— because not, not everybody's on the same page financially. You might be a saver, I might be a spender, and we battle with that. And so emotionally, to talk about that, it's almost discouraging. And nobody— and so you don't want to have a conversation.

Yeah.

So whether you— and on the flip side too, you have a lot of money, you like going over your finances because you like to see that bottom line growing. And that's something that you're excited about.

Yeah.

But it's, it's so interwoven, if you will, with emotions. Whether you have money, you don't have money, what's the fraud piece? Like you said, Stephen, with, you know, the $16,000, I mean, that's crippling, you know?

Yeah.

And that's a number that even if you have money, it screws up your cash flow for 3 months. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's a daunting task. And so when you get back to what can you do, one, I think you need to be aware. I think you need to look at your banking situation. You need to look at the alerts. When I had that fraud, when Nicole and I had that fraud, we were fortunate enough to hear somebody say, you need to call this company. And it was Zander Insurance at the time, kind of like a LifeLock or CreditLock. And it's a service you have to pay for and that stinks that you have to like pay somebody else to lock your credit and all this stuff. But, and I think it was at the time $100 a year, so less than $10 a month.

Yeah.

We ended up paying for it and it was the, maybe the greatest payment I ever made because this company took over everything and I had to do, I didn't have to do anything. Yeah. And so it's something since then I'm like, we're always, we're never not going to have this because of the security features of this.

Do you ever worry about them being hacked though?

What's that?

Do you ever worry about them being hacked?

Well, yeah, that could be definitely a thing.

I mean, they all have that risk pool, right? Like every, yeah.

Well, that's kind of why when we work with clients, some of them come to us and they're in that little tiny local credit union that doesn't— the connection's not great in QuickBooks and you're really limited on like what your view is and it makes it harder for us to do our work.

Yeah.

And then sometimes you have, and I think a lot of times that people go there because they are able to walk into the branch. I walked into the little credit union up the street. It changed names. It was Bank of America actually was up the street and then it changed because there weren't— there wasn't enough people going in. So then sold it and it's like, Michigan Credit Union or something. And I walked in and the people were like, and there was this big hometown feel. And then I'm like, oh, I don't have an account here. Just trying to figure out like what kind of a bank you are and is it worth me having something local?

Because—

Well, they celebrate you when you walk in.

Lynda Artesani.

They were like so nice, like Midwestern banks, so nice. And, but they were like excited somebody walked in the door and that's how much banking's changed. Because you don't go to the bank anymore if you don't have to. Why would you? And, you know, I have a husband that thinks it's— he'll go in and just talk to everybody. And I'm like, you're like a business client.

He likes the candy that he gets.

Well, you know, yes, he likes his candy, but he also, you know, he came from the day of where you would meet the banker when he was in business. You had the bank relationship. You went in and the banker knew us. They took us out to dinner. And, you know, we had a— I think at the time we owed the bank the most money that they had on the books because of the properties. We had mortgages and like, I'm like, oh, this is really nice. I've never been taken out by a banker. And then she says, I'm like, yeah, you're our biggest loan. I'm like, oh, that's not a good reason to be the one that you want to take us to dinner. But we, you know, we paid on time and they were really nice and we were thinking about changing and buying more properties and they liked us. So, and even at the end it was a little bittersweet because we went through, I don't know how we've been through almost the entire mortgage when we sold and she took us out to dinner then too. But that was a small credit union.

Yeah.

And it wasn't a big bank. And I think a lot of that personalized relationship's lost now in the bigger banks 'cause there's no branches and it's all online. You can't even walk in. He went into the bank not that long ago, walked in and they're like, you have to have an appointment.

Yes.

I was just— You can't just walk in.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which makes sense.

It's not a bad thing. I mean, I understand it. It makes sense. I mean, those, that is the, it's that retail kind of service.

He's correcting me. He said we were the biggest account they had.

Oh, oh, oh.

We didn't own the most money.

Well, remember the day when a savings and loan would give you a toaster for opening an account.

Right.

Yeah.

You know?

And now they give you like, they dangle like, oh, come to my bank. We're gonna give you like $2,000 if you open a savings account with us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the precedent too. That's the precedent that the banks set. So if you think way back in the, this probably pre my time, but more my parents' time, to have a relationship at a bank was like a thing. It was like, you know, I bank here and my money's here. And who's the guy from A Wonderful Life? George. And it's, he knows all the people and it was a bigger deal.

Yeah.

And then when I was growing up, so like in the early '80s and my parents got me a bank account and maybe mid-'80s, I was able to get a checking account when I was like, 12 or 13 years old. So my parents wanted to teach me how to be financially responsible. And then from that was, here's debit cards. Debit cards are here and bank accounts are free. And not only that, it's free. If you come to the bank, we'll give you money to open up an account. And so for years you have this precedent with the banks where everything's free and it's—

Yeah.

And it wasn't like that before that. I mean, don't get me wrong. The interest rates were 15%, 16%, 17% on savings accounts, but it wasn't free. Like there was a payment or some sort of like you had to keep balances. But we went into this like 20-year span of everybody going, why would I bank with you? It's not free. Everything's free. And then to shift that now into—

Yeah.

Realm of business banking in your realm of the treasury management services and saying you can have this array of products but it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you this much a month, call it $200 a month. And but it will offset those hard cost fees with balances and things we call them ECR, Earned Credit Ratings, Earned Credit Rate. And so offset those. But people will go, what do you mean I have to pay fees? Like for the last 30 years I have never even heard that. We're kind of starting to shift back to this. The 18%, you know, deposit rates are gone. You know, now, you know, mortgage rates are up, but the bank is trying to figure out a way for it to still make money. And so when you're introducing these, like, now we're back to fees, the whole world is like, you haven't done this for 35 years. And so it's not— so it's everybody shifting their mindset of like, whoa. And to your question, what's the right amount of fees? And every bank's different, right? You got big banks, you have regional banks, you have credit unions. And people will come into the big banks and they'll say, I'm going to a credit union because they don't charge fees. And I say, well, they charge fees, but you're the member. So that's the fees that you're paying are kind of going back to you, if you will. And I just, I look at banks like, you know, Lynda, you touched on it. You got big banks that have to, that are federally regulated, maybe overly regulated, but, and that's probably a good thing as well. Mm-hmm. But regulated to keep balances. And they're also regulated from a fraud perspective of, how they need to protect the assets that they have, which are in the trillions of dollars, right? So, you know, these massive balance sheets that banks have to protect. Then you have the smaller regional banks that maybe don't have as many federal compliances. Right. Maybe the technology's not as good, but the service when you walk in is maybe better. They're willing to take a little more risk on their loans that they take, right? Because if you look at the big banks, the big banks, we do a ton of loans, But the margin on those loans are 1.5% to 2.5%. So if I asked you, hey, you have $1 million and I'll pay you 2%, you'd say, pick a hike.

I don't—

I definitely want to get more. But if you have a lot of those transactions, a lot of those loans, the 1.5% adds up to a lot of money. So that's kind of where the big banks are at. The credit box is a lot smaller. The regional banks' credit box is a little bit bigger because they're willing to take a little more risk. because they're going to make those margins back. And then you have the credit unions that operate on their own. But I look at them kind of like grocery stores, like everybody likes their really small grocery store that has the couple things that they love. And that's like your credit union, right? And you walk in and everybody's super friendly. Then you have your big box stores where you can get everything. I know I can get my cleaning supplies, I can get produce, I can get this, I can get that. But it's different, right? You have your little stores for this, you have your big stores for that. And that's kind of how banking is to me. Your bigger banks are gonna have everything you need, but there might be some little things that you like, like maybe this credit union is giving 6% out on a CD and your big bank's giving 4. Maybe that's where you keep a piece of your pie. Yeah. Because that's, but you don't need everything there because it's not as easy. It's easier to flow with your money at the bigger banks because of all the technology.

So to your point above, the regional banks might be a little more flexible and not regulated as much. How many times, Lynda and Sarah, have you guys seen, you know, you'll get a new attorney in the stable that's going to hire us to do their work and they'll go, I went to ABC Bank down on the corner because it was the only bank that would give me a loan. And so now we're putting everything in there and then boom, there's something happens and you don't get that support.

No, it's not the same for that part. And then I remember telling my husband, like, we were in Rhode Island and then we moved to Florida I can't walk into that credit union down here. It doesn't exist. So where are we gonna put our money down here when we're going back and forth at the time we're going back and forth? So it just, you know, when we were doing the big loan on all the properties, it was like looking at, we compared multiple banks, one that we had been with for years, one of the bigger ones that we had our own personal stuff in, and then the credit union. And it came down to it, they wanted $10,000 origination on the loan and they didn't want it at the credit union.

Mm-hmm.

And that's where— It's the same, it's the same conversation he's having. Yeah, it's the same thing with most anything, like the car buying scenario that was brought up and those sorts of things. I think ultimately in the end, it really comes down to an evaluation and what's ways that you can protect yourself. It is, we all know it's hard to move banks, especially in business.

Very, very.

But there are ways to do it. I have a client right now, she's decided to move with a bank that I'm less comfortable with. I'm not a fan of this bank just because the way they set it up to work with people like us and it's very restrictive.

Exactly.

And it boggles my brain in a day and age that we're in now, why banks cannot understand what that is. We're not asking really for anything other than to be able to evaluate the account and do the things that we need to do and put restrictive things on it, approval things that we need for anything that walks out the door. I feel like the industry is trying to catch up in some ways and it's staying— it's stuck in other ways and it really needs an evolution in a whole new way, whatever that is. But there's got to be a value of people. Yeah. In this and the value of relationships. And I think it's just going back to what you have to do is review it like you do everything. You just have to decide if it's still going to work for you. We work with the bank now on a pretty high level and it's been frustrating. And Nicole has had to deal with it the most. But it's— nothing's perfect, I guess, is where I'm going with it. You just— it's your effort. You still have to put a lot of effort into it. And we do. And our time has to be engaged in that as well, because sometimes we're the front line of it.

So— We're the front line and we're also protecting the client. So we need a bank relationship that's going to allow us to do what we need to do to make that happen.

The ERCs and the PPPs, some banks were heroes, some were not, some were, I mean, it just, it wasn't that long ago we were dealing with all that crap and everybody had to come up to speed with that. So yeah, I just, the fraud activity is so prevalent. It's so, it is just, it is hard to stay ahead of somebody who's already ahead of us.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's why if you go with the bigger banks, they have a lot more invested in that fraud protection. That can't be, you can't be lost in the conversation because I think as we move forward in the future, you're going to see more of that. And like Brian said, it's gonna get more sophisticated and—

It is. So diversify, really, the way I see it. Not everything's perfect. You might have to diversify how you bank. Okay, fine.

Just keep track of it.

The bank is, is ever evolving.

Yeah.

Good or bad. And there's certain— when we talk about big banks, regional banks, credit unions, there's just a certain palette for what they're willing to do.

Yeah.

So, and, and even that, the palette for what they're willing to do, even that changes annually, right? So I had a client that they're looking for office space. They wanted to buy this building. It's $10 million. And we look at office space now as a restricted real estate.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's not that we won't do it.

Yeah.

But it's high risk now, right?

Yeah.

It's high risk. It's high risk.

Sure. Because of the—

4 years ago. Yeah. And 4 years ago, if you had told me you're buying office space, it all— Yeah, it's all the money. Easy. Let's go. And now we're like, hmm.

COVID really did a number. COVID really did a number on commercial real estate. It's sad to see.

Yeah.

Well, and so that's the point is, is that it's back to the relationship piece. I think you always have to have that communication line open.

Right?

And you have to realize that the bank's appetites are going to change based on what's happening globally and nationally and locally.

That's me.

But it's something you always, it's just like a relationship. It's always going to change. And I think that we as people, we get stuck into this. Well, you guys did this for me 5 years ago and it's like, yeah, the world has changed since 5 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And whether that's fraud, that's commercial real estate, that's the Treasury products that we're implementing, not implementing. And this is not a knock on small— I think small banks are great.

Yeah.

I think regional banks are great and credit unions are great. I think there's a time and place for, you know, you know, big banks, regional banks, small banks, credit unions. And they all— it's kind of like big corporations, small business, the really small mom and pops. Like there is a place for all of it. And it's just being able to be able to adapt. And if I could say this, you know, as far as the fraud is concerned, and you brought up your mom earlier, Sarah, but it's like when your mom used to say, or your dad, if it's too good to be true, it's not true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's like that within— you see that when you, when you do the smell test with a lot of this fraud, you know, and usually that's what catches it is you guys on the front line going, Yeah, it's a little weird. Let me just double check. Yeah, you're flying through your day and you're, and you're telling other people or you're, you know, hey, take care of this for me. They, they're going to miss that, you know?

Yeah, man, this is a great conversation.

It is. I'm just sitting here.

I love it. This has been awesome. It's so funny because it was just a simple conversation I had with him. I just had one question to ask him, and of course he and I love to chat. So I was like, hey, you got to come chat with all of us because more people need to know a perspective that's not popular.

I can't tell you how many of our clients that listen to this podcast are going to get something really valuable out of this one.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you for joining. Keeping the line of communications open and knowing that your banker is there to help you.

Mm-hmm.

Because you guys work with all lawyers, right? So lawyers got that rap too, you know? So if you can break down those barriers or walls, I think at the end of the day, we're trying to help you with the best of our ability and you're trying to help your clients the best of your ability. But there's going to be things that we can say yes to and there's gonna be things that we can say no to or have to say no to. And that's business, right? There's like great times and there's tough conversations.

Yeah.

That's one of the reasons why I really enjoy being in business banking is because it's less personal, even as personal as it is, it's less personal than having that with just a personal banking relationship, right? Because business is business. How do we grow and what's the vision of our company and can the bank help us accomplish that? And that's—

Well, so the last question before we peace out and say goodbye to everybody, Your golf game. How's that?

Good.

You must know the answer.

Bad.

It's not bad.

It's not good. It's, I'm working a lot more than I wish I was right now. So I'm busier, which is good for—

That's good.

That's good. Business. Less golf, but I need to—

That's how you can always tell if somebody's doing really well in golf. They're at the course a lot and they're not actually doing really well in business.

Well, it's a catch-22, right? It's either that or business is really going well because you're out with clients golfing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's true. Busier with that.

Yeah.

That's what a lot of lawyers do.

Yeah, for sure.

I love it. I just had to ask. Well, Tiara.

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Thank you, everybody.

See y'all next week.

Bye, everybody.

Bye-bye.