Correspondent Blog

Will August Employment Report Bring September Taper Announcement? The August employment report will be released at 8:30 am ET and while a tapering announcement may hang in the balance with this report, it’s more clear after Jackson Hole that the health of the labor market will be key in determining when rate hikes will commence…

When it comes to setting risk for bank strategic planning, contrary to popular belief, risk isn’t something to avoid. Risk is not even an element to minimize. This is counterintuitive as most bankers are taught to avoid and minimize risk. For that matter, most regulators, board members, and investors also reinforce this notion. Take for…

Because competition is intense and every lender is looking for a competitive advantage, at SouthState Bank, we strive to develop lending tools to help our bankers win more loans.  A better product, faster service, or insightful advice can translate into additional loans, better credit spreads, or additional fee income.  In this article, we explore our…

August Jobs Numbers and Another Read on Consumer Confidence With Jackson Hole now in the virtual rearview mirror, the market will turn to some economic numbers to ascertain when the Fed may start to institute tapering. While the September 22 FOMC meeting could have a taper announcement it’s more likely to come at the November…

What Will We Learn From a Virtual Jackson Hole Today? The waiting is just about over for Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s keynote address at a virtual Jackson Hole. His prepared remarks will be released at 10am ET but that hasn’t stopped several regional Fed presidents  from front-running the chairman and declaring that tapering should begin…

You can slice and dice your credit portfolio all you want, but if you are not paying attention to cross-correlations, your efforts could be sub-optimal. For example, many banks separate their multifamily exposure away from their single-family exposure. In some markets, these two subsectors are almost 80% correlated. A drop in housing prices usually occurs…

All Eyes on Jackson Hole There had been speculation as late as a few weeks ago that the Jackson Hole Fed Policy Retreat could be the venue in which Fed Chair Jerome Powell put some meat on the bones of taper talk with dates of initiation and some outline of the speed of tapering asset…

The market is now pricing Fed Fund hikes beginning in 2022, and the proposed fiscal stimulus in the form of two separate infrastructure bills totaling $4.5T has created a new sense of optimism for FOMC members. However, the lingering concern that many bankers hold is can the country (US Department of the Treasury) afford to…

Delta Variant Continues to Weigh on Growth Outlook The market continues to take its lead from rising virus cases, both domestically and globally, and that continues to provide a bid in Treasuries as second-half 2021 growth prospects are revisited and marked lower. We take a look at what could be a catalyst for a further…

These days, if you want to make tough branch decisions, use a good college student instead of an experienced banker. We will come back to the college student but, in this post, we pitted experienced bankers against the latest branch models against the latest machine learning applications to see which method was more accurate at…

FOMC Minutes and July Retail Sales With Congress in recess the only headlines from DC will likely come when the minutes from the latest FOMC meeting are released Wednesday afternoon. Recall that meeting didn’t change policy and while tapering was discussed there were no details released in the statement or the post-meeting press conference. The…

When designing products, choosing vendors or trying to solve usage challenges, understanding the importance of alerts and notifications is critical to success. Alerts are important now and will be even more essential for the modern banker to understand in the future as banking morphs into a collection of mobile apps and wearables. While we have…