Podcast: Reversing the De Novo Flatline

In the more than eight years since the Dodd-Frank Act passed, just 13 new U.S. banks have been chartered — and in some years, no new banks have been chartered at all. ABA Chairman Ken Burgess, who co-founded FirstCapital Bank of Texas as a de novo two decades ago, is concerned about these numbers.

While the number of de novos and applications in the pipeline have ticked up in recent months, the trend remains far below historical averages — and, as an ABA Data Bank post showed recently, the number of bank startups has diverged widely from its historic alignment with the overall business formation rate.

In this episode, Burgess discusses:

His own experience founding a bank and how going through that process — wearing lots of different hats — shaped his skills and career path as a banker.
Regulatory and economic reasons for the de novo drought.
How de novos infuse entrepreneurial energy into the banking industry and fuel the diversity of ways that banks meet community and customer needs.
His leadership in providing recommendations to the FDIC on policies to encourage de novo formation.

If you can’t see the audio player above, click here to listen to this week’s episode.