Calling All Bank Directors

The episode contains a handful of genuinely useful, non-obvious tactical insights for bank directors - particularly the 'get outstanding now so a one-level knockdown is survivable' strategy - but the 11-minute runtime is padded with general compliance commentary and the host's own summaries that add nothing new.

“if you do get a fair lending violation, you get knocked down one point, one rating level on your CRA. So you would go from outstanding to satisfactory and nobody would notice. But if you were only satisfactory, you would go to needs to improve”

“the first thing examiners do is what's your current rating? And they make an attempt to try to keep you at that rating if possible”

The strategic argument that winning a CRA legal challenge is a prerequisite for winning the capital-rule challenge is a moderately original framing, but most of the episode recycles standard compliance counsel (prepare board summaries, hire outside experts, do more CRA investments) without first-principles thinking.

“if you don't challenge the CRA rule, you're not going to have a chance challenging the capital rule. If you challenge the CRA rule, you have a much better chance of winning”

“We are in the midst of what I call a bank regulatory revolution, where bankers for the first time, particularly those in Texas, and I take my hat off to them, that are challenging the regulators”

Ken Thomas is a genuine subject-matter expert - 42 years teaching CRA at Wharton, author of the seminal CRA text, and a sitting community bank board member for over 20 years - but he is an academic-consultant rather than an operator who scaled a bank, and his insights reflect that advisory distance.

“I've been involved in CRA is important, but more relevant is the fact that I've been on a community bank board for over 20 years”

“Ken is the author of the seminal work on CRA and is a leading national expert on the subject. He taught at Wharton Business School, 42 years”

The episode cites concrete figures - FDIC outstanding ratings dropping from ~10% to 3%, failing ratings rising from 3% to 4% heading toward a projected 10%, a dozen DOJ fair lending cases with two dozen more pending, and a January 2026 effective date - which is above average for B2B compliance content, though still limited in variety and depth.

“the FDIC only gave out 3% outstanding ratings, where they used to give out maybe 10%. And the percent of failing ratings was about 3%, which is growing and growing. Now, more recently, it went up to 4%. We believe that the percentage of failing ratings on CRA is going to inch up to 10%”

“Kristen Clark, the head of the fair lending area at DOJ, she noted that they done about a dozen fair lending cases with two dozen more in the hopper”

The host asks broad, open-ended questions with zero follow-up or pushback, interjects with his own platitudinous bullet-point summaries mid-conversation, and never challenges any of the guest's assertions - functioning more as a moderator reading from a list than as an interviewer probing for depth.

“what should the compliance officers do now?”

“So finally, Ken, there has been some talk about a possible legal challenge to the final rule. What do you see happening there?”