Correspondent Blog

When Is Hot Not So Hot? A hotter-than-expected May CPI came and went and Treasuries sold off, right? Well, no. After a little early knee-jerk selling, buyers quickly came to the fore and Treasuries ended the day with lower yields, even in the face of new 30-year bond supply. What’s going on, you say? Well,…

Will May CPI Change the “Transitory” Narrative? The question for this week is what would it take for tomorrow’s May CPI numbers to change the Fed’s transitory narrative as it pertains to price increases? Expectations are for a solid increase of 0.4% overall and 0.5% core month-over-month, and while that is surely high by historical…

Last April, we published a piece (HERE) about how the pandemic has shifted traffic patterns to permanently impact branch strategy. We discussed how a combination of a faster shift to mobile banking during the pandemic and fewer trips to work, school, transportation hubs, and retail outlets had changed branch placement.  Traffic to urban core branches,…

May CPI and Aftermath of the Jobs Report With the Fed going into radio silence ahead of the FOMC meeting next week, that leaves investors more time to pick over the May jobs report and any implications that can be made.  While it missed expectations, it also was better than the mediocre April numbers. That…

For decades, community banks have structured term loans as 5-year fixed-rate facilities.  In the last six months, the percentage of 5-year fixed-rate loans at community banks has increased by approximately 25%, but this same bucket has held steady at larger banks (those over $25B in assets).  We believe that now is the right time for…

May Employment Report Misses Expectations But Better Than April The May Employment Report missed expectations of 675 thousand new jobs with 559 thousand jobs created. Even with the slight miss, the May results are more in line with the upbeat gains from March rather than the mediocre 278 thousand pick-up in April. The average over…

One deficiency at most banks is that while there is a business line owner, there is rarely a product manager (PM) of a particular product such as commercial loans, demand deposits, treasury management, or even digital banking. As a result, most banks roll out a new product and then move on. Neglected, products quickly become…

We recently interviewed a top commercial loan producer at a regional bank who explained how he uses three common principles to beat out his competition. We want to share his principles, philosophies, and techniques in hopes that it might serve as an aid for some of your new relationship managers and a reminder for some…

All Eyes on Friday’s May Jobs Report This holiday-shortened week will have all eyes already trained on Friday when we get the May Employment Report. The report will likely set the tone for the upcoming June FOMC meeting on the 16th. Will it be a strong result like March or will it be another mediocre…

April Core PCE Could be Biggest in Decades The market awaits the April Personal Income and Spending numbers later this morning but the biggest nugget will be the Core Personal Consumption Expenditures number (Core PCE). This is the Fed’s preferred inflation measure and the expected monthly gain of 0.6% would be the largest monthly gain…

Bank payments are a mess. Every payment method is a different channel. Worse yet, we confuse our customers with different forms, procedures, and jargon. It has been 50 years and we still expect our customers to know the difference between a wire and an ACH. If we can’t talk to customers about it right, we…

Fed Setting the Stage for Big Core PCE Number There has been a lot of Fed Speak this week and it mostly has been focused on the reoccurring theme that near-term inflation indications are transitory and not of long-lived concerns. We think part of the jawboning this week is pointing towards the Friday release of…