Correspondent Blog

April CPI and Retail Sales With a Heavy Dose of Fed Speak We wrote in this space last Monday that after the week is over we should have a good idea if April was able to outshine March as far as economic activity and while expectations were such, the reality failed to live up to…

Many community banks are struggling with excess deposits and weak loan demand.  The common question posed to us is, “should management focus on loan growth by accepting lower margins or wait for margins to recover?”  This blog will address current banking industry dynamics, how banks are responding and what we see as some winning strategies….

April Employment Report Misses Badly The April Employment Report badly missed expectations of 1.0 million new jobs with just 266,000 jobs created, while the March report was revised lower from 916,000 jobs to 770,000. With the latest numbers, around 8.2 million people remain unemployed from the pandemic. The problem now, with the disappointing April numbers,…

The Tells of April About to Appear This week is filled with three reports that will quickly define the economic activity in April: the ISM Manufacturing, ISM Services, and BLS Employment Report. The ISM Manufacturing ostensibly disappointed but it was due solely to supply constraints. Large backlogs and scant inventory point to robust orders but…

In business and banking schools an often-taught principle is that the demand for banking products is normally distributed. A bank would set its product and price, some people wouldn’t care, others would care a lot and the bulk in the middle is where a bank would focus its sales and marketing resources to convince them…

For banks looking to help their communities plus expand their relationship with their local county municipality, the Disaster Account Set (DAS) is an underutilized product with a growing need. For any given disaster, be it a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, or other event that displaces a material section of the population, there is an outpouring of…

April Outshines March, And We’re Not Just Talking About the Weather By the end of the week we’ll have a good idea just how strong the economy was in April. If the bevy of first-tier reports come in as expected April will outshine March as far as economic activity, not to mention its better springtime…

Treasuries Finally Acknowledge Strengthening Economy Was it the solid first quarter GDP report and the hints of more to come? Was it the resolutely dovish Fed? Was it the string of solid earnings reports? Was it the expectation of another bang-up jobs report next week? Well, perhaps it was all the above that finally caught…

Not This One But The Next FOMC Meeting The FOMC meeting concludes today but we’re not particularly interested in this meeting. Actually, we have our eyes set on the June meeting for the potential that meeting holds. Read on below for our thoughts on why it’s June and not today that may be the pivotal…

After more than 12 months working from home during the pandemic, many banks have yet to formulate a consistent plan on returning to work. While some banks are returning to their pre-Covid-19 state, others take the view that the future of work isn’t so important as the future of living. By taking advantage of this…

FOMC and GDP On Wednesday the FOMC Meeting concludes, and while we don’t expect any change in policy we expect to see the Fed up their characterization of the economy given the string of strong numbers since the March 17 meeting.  In the post-meeting press conference Powell is bound to be asked about whether they…

At SouthState Bank, we are using a tested strategy to increase loan revenue by 20% and decrease interest rate risk by 80%.  We are achieving this result on our better credit quality commercial loans without any gimmicks or confusion to the borrower.  We have developed a technique and a loan structure to assist bankers who:…