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The first half of 2022 was eventful for banks and credit unions, and there’s no reason to expect the pace to slow. Financial institutions must monitor changes to the payments ecosystem while simultaneously dealing with rising interest rates, eroding consumer confidence, and potential cracks in credit quality.

Here’s a quick summary of what the team at SRM sees as the key trends in financial services and how these trends might play out over the balance of the year.

Banks and credit unions must prepare for some consumer payments and credit quality turbulence.

Consumer prices rose by an astounding 9.1% by June from a year earlier – a 41-year high – causing the average American to spend roughly $460 more per month than they did a year ago, according to Moody’s Analytics Senior Economist Ryan Sweet.

Inflation has led the Federal Reserve to get aggressive with interest rates, including a 75-basis-point hike earlier this month. There is talk the Fed could opt for an unprecedented 100-basis-point increase in light of the June data.

Rising rates could deal another blow to consumers already facing higher costs for goods.

Many financial institutions have decided now is a better time to hire talent rather than buy another bank or credit union, enter new markets, or add business lines. The proof is in several high-profile recruiting announcements from small and midsize financial institutions.

CapStar Financial Holdings in Nashville, TN, will expand outside its home state for the first time after hiring a First Horizon banker in Asheville, NC. Encore Bank in Little Rock, AR, will move into Boulder, CO, after recruiting a former market president at Great Western Bancorp.

IC Federal Credit Union in Fitchburg, MA, hired former Avidia Bank executive CarrieAnne Cormier as its chief operating officer. Citadel Credit Union in Exton, PA, hired a team of bankers from Santander Bank with plans to launch a business banking division in August.

Columbia Banking System in Tacoma, WA, and Western Alliance Bancorp in Phoenix, AZ, are entering Salt Lake City after recruiting bankers from large competitors such as Bank of America, U.S. Bancorp, and Zions Bancorp.

Banks are also going after talent to grow or add new lines of business. RBB Bancorp in Los Angeles hired three bankers to beef up its Small Business Administration lending. Encore hired a banker to build a business banking community association.

Given recent headlines, stablecoin supporters may disagree with the saying, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

TerraUSA, an algorithmic stablecoin, imploded in May. This hurt the valuation of numerous cryptocurrencies and cast doubt on Tether’s ability to sustain its own $1 peg. Thus far, Tether has defied the skeptics.

Amid this tense environment, it’s interesting to revisit the January headlines speculating that PayPal was mulling introducing a stablecoin. According to company officials, the rumor was based on source code embedded in PayPal’s iPhone app, which was inadvertently left behind after an internal hackathon.

It’s difficult to envision PayPal taking on this challenge soon. Meta’s ill-fated stablecoin foray via Diem/Libra illustrates the hurdles facing such an endeavor, especially one undertaken by a tech giant.

At the same time, it’s important to speculate on how such an offering might impact the broader market over the long term. After starting its life as the first true digital financial services disruptor, PayPal could, ironically, find itself cast as an enabler of traditional market stability due to recent crypto market turmoil.

 In our recent report, we made the case that banks and credit unions consider Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) as part of a holistic suite of payments products.

While a study from IntraFi Network found that four out of five small banks and credit unions are reluctant to get into BNPL, SRM believes that traditional FIs have the infrastructure to handle compliance requirements from agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.