“Tis the season,” tax return season, that is.  The season where many large, consumer purchases are made possible with the down payment a tax return provides.  It’s one thing to buy something outright, but increasingly more and more consumer spending is on items that require some level of financing.  Getting a loan isn’t a bad thing, however, a hastily purchased and poorly thought-out transaction can be a very bad thing for your finances.

In our previous post we’ve laid out good practices for keeping your account information safe from fraud.   But, we understand that consumer fraud is still a risk that our customers could encounter.  With the growing complexity of consumer debit card fraud, we have partnered with SHAZAM to help provide us expertise on the process of quickly resolving customer fraud involving unauthorized charges.

Scams and fraud have never been more threatening to your everyday life.  It is important to keep your main checking account void of any connections to higher-risk areas, such as debit cards, online shopping, or connections to 3^rd party vendors such as Paypal, Venmo, etc.  With the more auto deposits, auto withdrawals and the amount of connections we run through our main checking account, if an incident of fraud occurs, it can be time-consuming and stressful to close accounts and reopen a new one.

Increased compliance regulation is invading the customer relationship and exhausting locally-owned and managed community banks into consolidating at a historic rate.

Entering 2018, the 115^th year of the First National Bank of Osakis’ existence, it is important to reflect on the vital role locally-owned and managed community banks play in personal finance, economic development, and community leadership for their small communities.

During the week of September 4^th, 2017, Equifax (one of the three common credit bureaus that report consumer credit) was breached, subjecting, reportedly, 143 million peoples’ personal information.  We are suggesting our customers take the following precautions with their credit profiles.

According to the company’s press release

FNB Osakis President, Justin Dahlheimer, was recently featured on the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’ podcast, Building Local Power.  Dahlheimer discussed the many benefits, challenges, and opportunities for local community banks.   Here’s a quote from that interview: