Correspondent Blog

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us we can turn our attention to the holidays. That means our annual gift guide for bankers. We do this as we not only have a good time putting this together, but it is one of the pieces of content that we produce that drives heavy traffic. At this time,…

Stimulus 2.0 and a Quiet Fed While we get November CPI this week, and are left to ponder the jobs report from last week, the market will be focused on developments surrounding the $908 billion stimulus bill that made some headway last week. With more PPP funds, $300/week of unemployment money, and funds for state…

On October 23, 2020, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) published the Fallback Protocol (Protocol) that allows firms that use LIBOR to transition to SOFR when LIBOR becomes unavailable.  On November 30, 2020, ISDA and IBA announced that it will cease publication of the one-week and two-month US dollar LIBOR settings immediately following the…

This is jobs week and also with a pair of ISM reports we’ll get a pretty good feel for the economic activity in November. That’s all well and good but the market is more interested in the fate and look of a stimulus bill and that has bonds on the back foot as traders bet…

Election Aftermath While the presidential election results are mostly settled, the Senate remains uncertain until Georgia’s twin run-offs on January 5. For now investors are assuming the Senate will stay in Republican hands, and thus in some sort of goldilocks gridlock, and that has the attention returning squarely to the virus. The outlook on case…

In a recent training, the recording of which is below, our Bank participated in an intro class on how to get better at remote selling and coaching put on by Jack Hubbard of St. Meyer & Hubbard. Given the pandemic and the fact that we believe remote selling is here to stay, we found it was…

We have blogged about how low-interest rates, COVID-19 credit strain, and tough competition for quality commercial loans create a challenging environment for community banks. One way that community banks are responding to deterioration in net interest margin (NIM) is by embracing commercial loan hedging programs. These hedging programs can appeal to borrowers in today’s interest rate…

The market is being buffeted this morning by news of a split between Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Fed Chair Powell on the future of several emergency lending programs. Fed Chair Powell wants the programs, namely the corporate credit facility, the muni liquidity program, and Main Street program carried over through year-end; whereas, Mnuchin says the…

We’ve mentioned the recent bi-polar nature of stocks and it has been on full display this week. The Monday rally  was fueled in no small part by the positive vaccine news from Moderna (95% effective). In the words of Dr. Fauci the results couldn’t have been better. The Moderna vaccine joins similarly positive Pfizer results…

Office lending for banks has been one of the better-performing sectors of commercial real estate (CRE) for banks for some time. Even during the pandemic, the credit on office loans is doing surprisingly well. The question arises, what happens in the future? Will it be business as usual post-pandemic? Will companies take more space to…

Between low-interest rates, the concerning rise in COVID-19 cases, and tough competition for quality commercial loans, community banking is a tough business.  While there has been a nominal deterioration in credit quality thus far, a deterioration in the business environment related to the pandemic and lack of fiscal stimulus may change that. Net interest margins…

Virus Trends Regain Spotlight With the election results coming into clearer focus, even though the Senate remains uncertain until Georgia’s twin run-offs on January 5, for now investors are assuming the Senate will stay in Republican hands and that has their attention returning squarely to the virus. The outlook on vaccines, case trends and hospitalizations…