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• ABA Banking Journal: ABA CEO to ag bankers: As Capitol Hill power shifts, ABA’s advocacy will not
• ABA Ag Conference: Policy experts begin to break down midterm’s effect on ag banking
• ABA Banking Journal: FDIC issues relief guidance for Indiana, South Dakota banks affected by storms
• Politico: ‘Buckle up fast’: Wall Street braces for Democrats
• CISA News: Passkeys Are Better Than Passwords. But They Are Not Enough.

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ABA Banking Journal: ABA CEO to ag bankers: As Capitol Hill power shifts, ABA’s advocacy will not

While Tuesday’s midterm elections will significantly remake the power dynamic in the next Congress, the American Bankers Association’s advocacy work remains business as usual, according to President and CEO Rob Nichols.

Addressing ABA’s 74th Agricultural Bankers Conference today, Nichols told the crowd in Minneapolis that while the results of the elections were “historic” and the roster of lawmakers and the power in Congressional committees will soon change, the issues ABA pursues on behalf of its members will not.

“The tactics we use next year may change under a divided government versus one-party control — different ways to surface, advance and move our issues,” he said. “But the issue-set didn’t change at all. And we remain laser-focused on ag and rural banking issues.”

In the near term, he promised that ABA would do three things.

“First, our policy team is going to dissect all of the results over the coming days and weeks to tell you what it means exactly for our industry going forward,” he said. “Two, we’re going to continue to work with both parties to advance the issues that you all care about. Three, we’ll continue to talk about the important role banks play in the ag and farm economy to create jobs and growth.”

Nichols reminded attendees that the banking sector “historically has done well” under a divided government and that ABA is “militantly bipartisan, always has been and will continue to be.” He added that ABA will hold a webinar on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at 2 p.m. ET, during which the association’s policy experts will discuss election results, what the makeup of new Congress will look like, what it means for banks, and “where we’re going to be on offense and where we’ll be on defense.”

Nichols was joined on the dais by Cathy Owen, ABA’s newly elected chair. It was Owen’s first public appearance as chair since being elected during ABA’s annual convention at the end of October. Owen, who is chair and CEO of State Holding Company and executive chair of Eagle Bank & Trust Company in Little Rock, Arkansas, shared her story of 50 years in banking but also her personal connection to the agricultural sector. For five generations, her family has owned a 2,000-acre farm in southeast Arkansas.

“About 1,000 acres of it are farmed — two thirds rice, a third soy. Next year, it’ll probably only be a third rice; rice is really struggling,” she said, adding that the family leases the 1,000 acres to a farmer in his third generation of farming. The other 1,000 acres are made up of a reservoir and land set aside for moisture retention.

“There’s nothing better than being out in the country. Cell phones don’t generally work unless you stand on one leg out in front of the barn,” she said. “It has been, I think, a very integral part of my family staying together and enjoying each other into this fifth generation. There’s something special about being on a farm and watching the sun come up in the morning and set in the evening. It’s so peaceful. It’s like everything relaxes as soon as I turn down that gravel road.”

As ABA chair, Owen said she plans to continue to build upon the progress that ABA has made during the past year, ensuring that “banks of all sizes, charter types and business models, continue to be strong and have access to the processes and innovations they need to serve the people, businesses and communities that they operate in.”

She highlighted fraud prevention has a key area of interest as well as creating “clear and durable rules around digital assets that protect our customers, as well as maintaining financial stability within our industry.” Innovation in banking is also critical, she noted, but urged caution around agentic artificial intelligence so that it “doesn’t undermine our banking industry and fail to protect our customers.”

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ABA Ag Conference: Policy experts begin to break down midterm’s effect on ag banking

In 74 years, the timing of ABA’s Agricultural Bankers Conference has often put it around election day — perhaps, however, none as transformational as Tuesday’s midterms.

Members of the American Bankers Association’s policy team were on hand to help ag and rural lenders begin to sort out the election results that put Democrats in control of the House and Senate and what that the transfer of power in the next Congress might mean for the overall banking sector as well as for ag and rural banking programs and priorities.

Jess Sharp, ABA’s EVP of advocacy and innovation, told meeting attendees that unpacking what happened less than 24 hours before would take a while — with 50 House seats (as of Wednesday evening) left to call, including Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), who is current chair of the House Financial Services Committee, and Senate seats in Alaska and Mississippi yet to be decided.

“When all the votes are tallied, we’re going to be dealing with a very different House and Senate,” Sharp said. “But we’ve been through this before, and the message everyone should take from here is that we will continue to work in a bipartisan way. We have friends on both sides of the aisle.”

For key committee leadership in the new year, Jonathan Blum, ABA’s EVP of congressional relations and legislative affairs, said the Senate Banking Committee next year likely would be chaired by Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, who currently is ranking member. In the House, longtime Rep. Maxine Waters of California likely would return as chair of the Financial Services Committee. Names being circulated to chair the Senate’s Agriculture Committee include Michael Bennett of Colorado and Sherrod Brown from Ohio who will return to the Senate after winning his race on Tuesday. Cory Booker from New Jersey is another possibility for chair, Blum said. For the House Committee on Agriculture, the names being mentioned for leadership include Shontel Brown from Ohio as well as Jim Costa from California.

“Our team’s been engaging with these lawmakers over the last several years,” Blum added. “So, our message is going to be consistent. Our priorities are evergreen.” Chris Fisher, ABA’s VP of congressional relations said ABA made a strategic decision after the election of 2024 not to neglect the minority political party, explaining that members of the ABA policy team “continued to engage and participate” on the Democratic side, adding that it’s important to “make friends no matter who has the gavel.”

Fisher predicted that Democrats’ policy agenda would stick close to “kitchen table concerns” around affordability, fuel prices, healthcare and childcare costs.

When lawmakers think about affordability, Fisher said, we want them to think of banking as part of the solution.

“I always tell members, particularly some of the Democrats who haven’t perhaps often dealt with banking issues, that many in their communities already know in how expensive it is to be broke,” he said. “If they have to take their paycheck to a check casher or if they need a loan from a payday lender, those people belong in the bank. If you want to talk about affordability of financial services, get your constituents inside the bank.”

Fisher also predicted a “robust oversight agenda,” but that any time that this new majority is not talking about affordability, “they are losing. And I think they know it.”

Lame duck and beyond

Sharp said that as policy folks begin to assess next steps, there are two important timeframes to consider as part of the conversation: the near term with a lame-duck Congress and after January when the new Congressional class is sworn in.

As lawmakers return to Capitol Hill on Nov. 9 after the election, they are going to have to “tackle some really difficult challenges,” he said, with government funding at the top of the list. The Senate passed a three-month continuing resolution prior to recessing for the month of August. This postponed the deadline to fund the government until Dec. 11 by which time Congress must pass full-year spending bill or another stopgap measure.

The agriculture industry has been waiting for a new Farm Bill. The Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 initially expired in 2023 and has been extended multiple times following stalled negotiations in Congress. The law was extended through Sept. 30 of this year. The Senate Banking Committee most recently voted 12-11 to advance the bill in mid-September, with the current version of the legislation including several provisions supported by ABA. Efforts stalled to push it through the full Senate. Blum said the Farm Bill could find its way into budget talks or the limited number of working days in the lame-duck session could also slow progress and potentially renew talks of another one-year extension.

“We’re going to make an aggressive push over the next several weeks,” Sharp said, urging ag bankers to participate in a grassroots effort to tell lawmakers to break the cycle of short-term Farm Bills and pass the five-year extension currently on the table.

“We want to make it clear to Congress that it’s important to everyone in this room. We want to paper Washington with letters of support,” he added. “This is how we show our numbers and our strengths.”

And while industry is preparing for new faces in Congress, there are still familiar faces in Washington to work with — at Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, the IRS and others — in moving ag banking issues forward. A primary concern for rural lenders is long-awaited guidance for the Access to Credit for our Rural Economy Act, or ACRE, which was passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.

“We got interim guidance on ACRE [from Treasury and the IRS] and we’re expecting final guidance from them soon, over the next several weeks,” Blum said. “We’ve been pushing really aggressively, and we’re going to continue that. We want to see it by the end of the year because you all need certainty.”

ABA’s policy team reminded the audience that the version of ACRE that passed as part of the OBBB was a scaled-back version of its original scope, and ABA is looking for ways to expand ACRE’s benefit to farmers, ranchers and rural communities.

Currently under the legislation passed last year, qualified lenders can exclude 25% of the interest income they earn on qualifying new loans secured by agricultural real estate, real property used for fishing or seafood processing, and aquaculture facilities. Refinancing an existing loan does not qualify the loan for the exemption. As originally proposed, ACRE called for 100% tax exemption for loans secured by rural or agricultural real property.

“We will be introducing ACRE to new members of Congress, and part of that is being able to tell the ag bankers’ stories, to educate your members of Congress on how you’re saving your farmers money,” Fisher said. “So, as you as you are taking advantage of the acre credit, make sure you’re telling those stories, because those stories are going to unlock the advocacy. Because this isn’t just about farmers and ranchers and producers. This is about supporting and being a part of rural communities all across this country.”

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ABA Banking Journal: FDIC issues relief guidance for Indiana, South Dakota banks affected by storms

The FDIC today released guidance with steps intended to provide regulatory relief to financial institutions and facilitate recovery in areas of Indiana and the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota affected by severe storms.

The agency encouraged banks in affected areas to work constructively with borrowers experiencing difficulties due to severe weather, including extending repayment terms, restructuring existing loans or easing terms for new loans. The agency said banks may receive favorable Community Reinvestment Act consideration for community development loans, investments and services in support of disaster recovery. The FDIC also will consider regulatory relief from certain filing and publishing requirements.

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Politico: ‘Buckle up fast’: Wall Street braces for Democrats

A full-frontal attack is coming for Wall Street — courtesy of a newly emboldened Democratic Party.

Democrats’ sweeping victories Tuesday night — taking back the House and Senate in convincing fashion, with major and surprising wins in Texas, South Carolina and New York — represent a sea change in Washington. And not just for the GOP and President Donald Trump.

Cryptocurrency businesses, financial firms and artificial intelligence giants that have reaped the benefits of a deregulatory wave over the last two years are about to run into a Democratic buzzsaw. Led by Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who is vying to take back the House Financial Services Committee’s gavel, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is now in line to sit atop the Senate Banking Committee, Democrats are vowing to aggressively use their new oversight authority. And some industry officials are bracing for the worst.

“Wall Street is waking up to a Democratic tsunami far beyond what consensus had suggested. And that means Democrats are coming into power even more energized, seeing a weakened Trump presidency and a shattered Republican Party,” said Frank Kelly, founder and managing partner of Fulcrum Macro Advisors. “The Street needs to buckle up fast. It’s going to be a bumpy two years ahead.”

Lawmakers on the left are pledging to quickly ratchet up scrutiny of corporate America — and particularly of those companies that have done business with the Trump family or have donated to any of his pet projects, such as the White House ballroom. As part of those probes, Waters and Warren could take on the crypto industry, which was among the earliest beneficiaries of the Trump age and has since become synonymous with the Trump business empire. A crypto lobbyist, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told MM that some in the industry feel that “the walls are closing in.”

Democratic control of the Senate, meanwhile, could spur new investigations into the U.S. chip giant Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang, Ari Hawkins writes to MM. Prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket will probably face more scrutiny. And Elon Musk’s government-slashing efforts at the outset of the administration are sure to draw Democratic probes.

“LAWYER UP,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on X. Garcia is the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The financial world was one of the biggest winners when Trump won back the White House two years ago, following a bruising stretch of oversight, regulation and enforcement under President Joe Biden’s watch. But Democrats’ wins all but mark the end of the Trump era’s unbridled deregulatory nature.

Of course, executives and lobbyists looking for specific regulatory reforms (or relief) have one very powerful lever still at their disposal: their Trump-appointed regulators.

Few on K Street expect regulators like the Paul Atkins-led Securities and Exchange Commission or Michael Selig’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission to slow their work down because of Democrats’ wins.

Yet even they won’t be immune from the coming frenzy of oversight letters, hearings and investigations.

“The financial services industry has had two years of lighter oversight. A Warren-Waters regime ends that — for the firms and for the agencies,” a financial industry lobbyist told MM. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director “[Bill] Pulte, Selig and Atkins will likely spend more time in the witness chair than writing rules. Keeping regulators busy testifying has always been one of the most effective ways to slow them down, and I expect we’ll see plenty of it.”

As for what the oversight means long term, that remains to be decided. But the all-consuming nature of their win Tuesday opens the door to a free-for-all scramble among Democratic wonks to shape the party’s economic and financial policy agenda for 2028 — and oversight could prove critical in the process.

“Those discussions start tomorrow,” a former Biden-era regulator said, noting that policymakers will want to tie their oversight work to voters’ affordability concerns such as housing.

Either way, Democrats are looking at what former SEC Chair Gary Gensler described to MM as a “target-rich environment.”

“It’s a crowded field,” he said late Tuesday. “There’s a lot to investigate in terms of the Trump administration, and there’s a lot to look at in terms of corporate America’s relationship with certain parts of the administration.”

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CISA News: Passkeys Are Better Than Passwords. But They Are Not Enough.

For decades, passwords have been one of cybersecurity’s most persistent weaknesses. Users forget them, reuse them, share them, and surrender them to convincing phishing sites. Attackers steal credentials, automate credential stuffing, and increasingly use artificial intelligence to make social engineering more effective.

What are passkeys?

Passkeys promise to eliminate much of this problem.

Built on public-key cryptography, passkeys replace shared secrets with cryptographic credentials. There is no password for an attacker to steal, intercept through phishing, or reuse against another service. Properly implemented passkeys are also phishing-resistant because authentication is bound to the legitimate service.

That represents a significant improvement over passwords and many traditional forms of multi-factor authentication (MFA). But it does not answer a more fundamental question: Just because someone successfully authenticated, should we continue to trust that identity?

Passkeys strengthen authentication. They do not eliminate identity risk.

What Passkeys Get Right

Traditional authentication frequently relies on passwords combined with one-time passcodes, SMS messages, or push notifications. While stronger than passwords alone, these methods remain vulnerable to phishing, adversary-in-the-middle attacks, MFA fatigue, SIM swapping, and social engineering.

Passkeys fundamentally change that model. Instead of presenting a reusable secret, the user’s device holds a private cryptographic key while the service retains the corresponding public key. The private key is not transmitted during authentication.

This provides meaningful protection against phishing, credential stuffing, password database theft, and other attacks built around stealing reusable credentials. Passkeys can also improve usability because users no longer need to remember complex passwords or repeatedly retrieve authentication codes.

Organizations should welcome that transition. The mistake would be assuming that stronger authentication solves the broader identity security problem though.

Authentication Is Not Identity

When passkey authentication succeeds, the system has strong cryptographic evidence that a credential associated with an account completed the authentication process.

But was the account legitimately established? Has the underlying identity been compromised? Is the device trustworthy? Is an attacker operating through an authenticated session?

A perfectly functioning authentication mechanism cannot compensate for an identity that should never have been trusted.

If an attacker establishes or takes control of an account before a passkey is bound to it, the organization may subsequently perform highly secure authentication of the wrong person. The stronger the authenticator becomes, the more important the integrity of enrollment becomes.

What Happens When the Device Changes?

Legitimate users also do not always authenticate from the same device. Phones are lost, stolen, damaged, or replaced. Employees receive new laptops. Consumers switch technology ecosystems.

Passkey synchronization addresses many of these scenarios by making credentials available across supported devices. But organizations still need to accommodate legitimate users who arrive without access to the expected passkey.

At that point, the challenge shifts from authentication to recovery and re-establishing trust. How does the organization determine whether someone requesting access from an unfamiliar device is the legitimate account owner?

If the fallback relies on a password, SMS code, email link, knowledge-based question, or help desk process, attackers may target that weaker recovery path.

The passkey has not been compromised. The attacker has gone around it.

Organizations therefore need a secure way to re-establish identity trust before associating a new authenticator or device with an existing account.

Authentication Is Only One Moment

Another gap emerges after authentication. Many identity architectures effectively operate according to a simple sequence: Authenticate, grant access, and trust the resulting session.

Modern identity-based attacks do not necessarily stop at the login screen. Attackers can hijack authenticated sessions, compromise trusted devices, abuse privileges, manipulate account attributes, or conduct anomalous transactions. In these situations, the authentication mechanism may have worked exactly as designed.

The question cannot simply be, “Did this user authenticate successfully?” It must also be, “Do we still have sufficient evidence to trust this identity and its activity?”

Layer Identity Threat Detection on Top

This is where identity threat detection complements passkeys.

Instead of treating successful authentication as a permanent declaration of trust, organizations can continuously evaluate identity risk. Device characteristics, identity attributes, behavioral anomalies, network intelligence, account changes, transaction context, and threat indicators can help determine whether an identity remains trustworthy.

This does not require adding friction to every interaction. A risk-based model can allow legitimate users to proceed normally while escalating controls when risk changes.

A known user authenticating from an established device and behaving normally may require no additional intervention. The same account attempting recovery from an unfamiliar device, changing critical account attributes, or conducting anomalous activity could trigger additional identity verification.

The model changes from authenticate once and trust thereafter to establish trust, continuously evaluate risk, and respond when trust changes.

The Future of Identity Security Must Go Beyond Authentication

Passkeys and identity threat detection address distinct parts of the identity attack surface.

Passkeys reduce risks associated with passwords, credential theft, credential stuffing, and phishing. Identity threat detection addresses risks surrounding authentication, including enrollment, recovery, device changes, session compromise, and anomalous activity.

As organizations eliminate passwords, attackers will adapt. Instead of attacking the authenticator directly, they will look for opportunities around it.

That does not mean passkeys failed. It means they succeeded in making one part of the attack surface harder.

Passkeys answer an important question: Does this user possess a legitimate credential required to authenticate?

Identity threat detection addresses the question that matters throughout the identity lifecycle: Should we still trust this identity?

Organizations need to answer both.

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2027 SDBA Advertising & Sponsorship Planning Guide

The SDBA’s 2027 Advertising & Sponsorship Planning Guide is now available! This guide is your full media kit for advertising: 

• SDBANKER Magazine
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• BankHer Bulletin
• Emerging Leader Newsletter
• SD Bank Directory
• BankSquawk Podcast
• Classified advertising

It also provides information on sponsorship and exhibit opportunities at SDBA events throughout the year. The SDBA encourages business partners to view the guide to see how they can get involved in the SDBA in 2027.

2027 Member Bank Holiday Signs

The SDBA offers holiday signs that banks can print and display to notify customers when the bank will be closed for standard holidays. The signs are set up to be printed on 8.5x11" paper and are provided as a high-resolution pdf file. Banks may print these signs and use as they see fit.

2027 Holiday Signs

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