Correspondent Blog

Banks face a big set of challenges ahead. To gain a competitive advantage, having an effective and efficient systematic approach that is repeatable and can be part of your bank’s culture would be helpful. In this article, we provide a five-step AI-enabled process that will help your bank with solving strategic challenges. 5S Framework Overview…

By 1985, the banking industry had radically changed. Consolidation among financial institutions started to occur at a pace never seen before, a pace that continues to this day. Understanding the drivers of banking consolidation is imperative when managing bank performance. In this article, we break down the lessons from this long-term trend. In 1985, there…

Bankers love rules and formulas. Here are 20 banking rules that have served us well over the years. Use these and save yourself much time and stress. These “hacks” are a combination of rules and shortcuts that we use daily in our decision-making. We have tried to pick some non-obvious shortcuts that have historically produced…

Based on the 2007 to 2010 bank failure experience, we modeled the financial health of every bank using the last 16 quarters of historical performance.  We have also created projections for the next 18 months. There are 150 banks that currently have a Grade of “8” out of 10, with 10 being the safest. In…

As fans of the hit Apple TV psychological thriller Severance know, one of the jobs of severed Lumon employees is to find the numbers that elicit negative emotions and make them disappear. Similarly, bankers must do the same thing when dealing with asset-liability management (ALM). This article examines how running multiple bank simulations can help…

To ring in and celebrate the New Year, check up on your bank’s future financial health. Based on the 2007 to 2010 bank failure experience, we modeled the financial health of every bank using the last 16 quarters of historical performance.  We have also created projections for the next 18 months. Each bank has an…

Community banks (under $10B in assets) serve a key role for borrowers, local communities, and the broader US economy. Community banks are better positioned than many other creditors to follow and adapt to local economies, industries and trends, thereby, being better stewards of capital.  Community banks may also serve as buffers for the extreme swings…

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published three articles on why banks fail (the first one here).  While the aim of the research was to identify the cause of approximately 5,000 US bank failures over the course of 160 years, the research also infers what factors bank executes can influence to not only avoid…

Bankers love easy. Who doesn’t want an easy way to have a more profitable bank? We also love to keep things simple. It is a common refrain. Compounding the problem is that in banking, we often think that “simple” and “easy” as synonymous. In this article, we will touch on innovation, technology and banking strategy…

Your bank is likely full of silos. Deposits rarely coordinate with Loans, Loans seldom talk to Mortgage, Risk is often on the outside looking in, and no one talks to Marketing until it is too late. These silos frequently prevent executing a single strategy, hinder communication, and interfere with collaboration. As a result, banks often…

It has long frustrated us that our industry has no aggregate banking calendar. That is, there is no single place to see all the banking conferences, workshops, symposiums, and conventions (we will use the generic “conference”) in the banking industry. If you are trying to budget for next year, train yourself, train your people, prospect,…

S&P Global’s annual Community Banking Conference (CBC) should be on every executive banker’s agenda. This banking conference is designed to highlight top performing banks, their strategies and tactics. The 2024 conference covered a wide range of topics that matter and has the highest ratio of top-performing banks to attendees of any conference in the industry….