Pub. 9 2019-2020 Issue 3

4 O V E R A C E N T U R Y : B U I L D I N G B E T T E R B A N K S - H E L P I N G C O L O R A D A N S R E A L I Z E D R E A M S www.coloradobankers.org T he holiday season puts many in a giving mood, whether to family and friends or to charitable organizations aimed at helping the less fortunate. Banks work hard to ensure our customers’ money is safe in their accounts and gets where they want it to go when they choose to spend it. Banks simu lt aneously prov ide customers safe, secure and easy access to their money 24 hours a day, while maintaining aggressive fraud protection and fraud monitoring systems. That spending will begin this month, with 74% of Americans expected to open their wallets on either Black Friday or Cyber Monday, according to recent reports. The average adult is expected to drop $483.18 on Black Friday alone, amounting to $90.14 billion, an increase of $30.57 billion more than projected spending of $59.57 billion in 2018. Other reports show that in-person purchasing is expected to experience a renaissance, although online and mobile purchasing will continue to hold strong for holiday shoppers. Meanwhile, those shoppers will be digging deep into their pockets in support of their favorite non-profits over the next two months. According to the most recently available IRS tax return information, in 2017, Americans made $256 billion in cash charitable donations, with another $88 billion in non-cash donations. The bulk of those donations, reports show, happen in December, with 17 percent of overall giving happening during that month. What does this mean? Banks will be ever vigilant in protecting their customers’ assets. Our customers can take comfort in knowing that financial institutions employ a variety of tools to protect them, including sophisticated technology and monitoring techniques, intricate firewalls and other methods of securing customer data to include multifactor authentication, encryption, privacy policies and training, anomaly detection, and more. Customers, too, play an important role in protecting financial information through education and the use and regular updating of technological protections such as anti-virus software, anti-spyware and firewalls. And, if customers do somehow fall victim to fraud, they are always protected against unauthorized fraud losses and are refunded by their bank. Banks stopped $9 out of every $10 (or 89 percent) of attempted deposit account fraud in 2016, according to ABA’s 2017 Deposit Account Fraud Survey. With those thoughts in mind, below are a pair of lists that include tips you can share with your customers on holiday giving and on keeping their finances and identities safe during the holiday season. Chairman’s Message BY JOANNE SHERWOOD, 2019-2020 CBA CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CITYWIDE BANKS The Giving Season