25-year retrospective tells the story of industry’s winners and losers

Editor's Note: This column ran in our Nov. 20 Pulse sent to more than 14,000 email subscribers. For weeks, I’ve been scouring the pages of BankBeat and its predecessor publication Northwestern Financial Review to compile an industry retrospective that looks at how the industry has changed across the past 25 years. .The narrative of the last quarter century reveals how lawmakers’ actions too often overlook unintended consequences; how critical bank advocacy is when Congress responds to a crisis; how market resilience requires innovation and capital, and how often the pendulum swings to ease and then tighten and then ease the rules by which you do business. This retrospective will be available to BankBeat readers in December. I encourage subscribers to share it with the under-50 crowd at your respective institutions. Here’s a snapshot of topics I have explored:Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Technically passed late in 1999, GLB modernized banking and allowed banks to extend their franchises into new business lines. Iowa’s Jim Leach had a clear vision that wasn’t shared by others, until it was.USA Patriot Act. Passed in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Act brought bankers into the national fight against terrorism by tracking the movement of money with the hopes of stopping future nefarious activity.The Great Recession. The so-called crash of 2008-10 actually began much earlier with loosened lending standards in mortgage finance and the “creative” bundling of poor credits into mortgage backed securities. The Dodd-Frank Act. The congressional response to the activities engaged in by Wall Street banks that sent a deluge of reg burden upon Main Street banks. Dodd-Frank also brought a new regulator into the mix: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. More simply known as S.2155, this law provided community banks some needed relief from the more onerous Dodd-Frank regs. It only took the Feds a decade to deliver it.Technology. How we bank, how we pay, how we connect, how we work (and how we read!) — technology has impacted all of these things. It’s been interesting to revisit where we were in 2000 versus today, and ponder how technology will impact our next quarter century.The Pandemic. It’s easy to scoff at some of the rules in force during the early days of the pandemic, but our reporting from that time showed bankers faced so many unknowns and conflicting guidance. Overwhelmingly, bankers put the health of employees and customers first. Industry contraction. On January 1, 2000, there were 8,580 commercial banks in the United States. As of June 30, 2025, there were 4,139. That’s the real story of the last 25 years. I am a historian at heart and long form is my favored form of journalistic writing, so this retrospective was gratifying to complete. Adding to the fun was knowing I witnessed it all firsthand, and so it felt like paging through a personal scrapbook. It was also rewarding because it’s likely my penultimate long-form piece before retirement (for real this time).If you aren’t a subscriber to our print publication, this would be a great time to subscribe. Print plus digital is a win-win for you and for those of us who report on your endeavors.