Correspondent Blog

The two biggest events driving the market this week are the Friday jobs report for July and the ongoing saga of the stimulus bill.  The jobs report will be the first in a few months to have the potential to alter perceptions and trading direction. If the report beats expectations (1.5 million new jobs), the…

What is with all the waving we do at the end of Zoom calls? Should we start waving as we back out of the room for in-person meetings in the future? By the same token, many banks are baffled by what to do with the Main Street Lending Program (MSLP), as this is not something…

Covid-19 has changed many aspects of banking from branch operations to credit underwriting and remote supervision of employees. Many community bank managers are physically distanced from their teams because of the pandemic. This distancing creates new challenges on how to supervise, motivate, communicate with, coach, train, and review bankers. We face this same challenge and…

Stimulus Bill and July Jobs Report It’s jobs week  so that will once again be the focus of the market and it’s been a while since the employment report held the potential to truly shift market expectations. But with the rise in Covid-19 cases and the stalling reopening efforts, the July jobs numbers will return…

Today’s FOMC meeting was never going to be a barnburner and it lived up (or is that down?) to those limited expectations. The Fed left the fed funds rate unchanged today (0.00%-0.25%) and did not tweak the Interest on Excess Reserves (still at 0.10%). And being a non-quarter-end meeting there wasn’t an update to the…

Today’s FOMC Meeting won’t lead to any changes in monetary policy but the most important piece of information is likely to come from the post-meeting press conference where Fed Chair Powell is likely to be asked about what other measures might be employed from here. Most likely the answer will be strong forward guidance as…

In the online world, customer reviews and ratings are ubiquitous. Consumers have come to expect them, yet few banks use them. Ironically, sites that rate banks, such as NerdWallet, BankRate, and others, maintain detailed reviews on banks with great success as well as places like Yelp. If your bank is not offering rates, chances are…

FOMC Meeting and Fate of Stimulus Bill This week’s FOMC Meeting won’t lead to any changes in monetary policy but the most important piece of information is likely to come from the post-meeting press conference where Fed Chair Powell is likely to be asked about what other measures might be employed from here. Most likely…

While several commercial real estate (CRE) sectors are showing signs of stress, the industrial sector is one of the few bank credit lines that are improving. Companies gained confidence at the end of the second quarter and started to lease more space. As such, weekly leasing activity jumped back to pre-Covid-19 levels after hitting a…

While Republicans appeared to have reached a ‘fundamental agreement” for a $1 trillion stimulus package, time is running short for all the legislative procedures to be accomplished before month-end. So it looks like some provisions of earlier stimulus bills, like the supplementary unemployment benefits, will expire at least briefly before something similar  is reinstated. While…

In a week with light data the market’s focus has started to turn to the evolving events in Washington DC as legislators start to craft some sort of stimulus measure with time exceedingly short. As is usual, however, Democrats and Republicans remain far apart over what the next stimulus bill will look like. Treasury Secretary…

Chances are you were already reducing the number of your branches. Between the interest rate environment over the past several years, the increase in digital spend, and the quest for greater operating leverage, banks can no longer afford large branch structures and still return their cost of capital. Recent studies now suggest a lower probability…