Correspondent Blog

Community banks divide into two groups – those that have shifted their digital marketing to encompass the pandemic and those marketing as if it was business as usual. Do you know which type is by far the least common? That’s right, the first. Do you know which type is by far the most successful? Yep…

One of the biggest mistakes that some bankers make is believing that banks are in the business of making loans.  It is true that banks make loans, but originating a loan is unquestionably an unprofitable business.  Banks earn an acceptable return on capital by keeping loans, not by making them.  We recently worked with our lender on a…

If you want to get ahead of a trend, consider investing in content for your bank. Content is the new growth accelerator in banking and banks would be wise to start small now, experiment, and learn the ways of the future. Content is the missing piece of growth acceleration and helps not only acquire new…

Research demonstrates that many companies do not sell their products or services evenly throughout the week, month, quarter, or year. Instead, in many industries, revenue and profit margins can fluctuate substantially throughout periods. It pays for community banks to not pay attention to this phenomenon in order to increase margins, but due to the vaccine,…

Credit is always changing, and CenterState watches a variety of markers such as corporate bond credit spreads, vacancy rates, net effective rents and many others in order to help us understand credit. Three of those important credit metrics are the probability of default (POD) by industry, the rate of change of that POD, and the…

As shown in the graph below, we may be witnessing the end of a multi-decade bull run in bonds.  After many decades of decline, interest rates may be on the rise for years to come.  This development is creating an opportunity for community banks to book longer-term fixed-rate loans with higher profit margins.  However, borrower…

Of all the lending programs in banking history, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has to be one of the most complicated ever to enthrall bankers. Consider that in the next couple of weeks, banks will be:  originating the second draw of PPP (PPP2) under new guidelines; originating PPP loans under the initial set of guidelines…

A credit tenant loan (CTL) is a loan secured by the real estate pledged as collateral and the obligation of a credit-rated tenant of that real estate.  These loans are a cross between a bond (because the tenant’s obligation to pay rent is a senior obligation of a creditworthy obligor) and a commercial mortgage (because…

The new split bipartisan Covid Relief Bill got traction yesterday and stands a good chance of getting approved in the next couple of weeks. Most versions of a new stimulus package contain the approval for the next draw of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The SBA, in turn, is preparing to bring the program live…

With FDA approval and the first shipments of the COVID-19 vaccine start to hit our communities this week, the question comes up over should banks have a policy around if the vaccine should be mandated, recommended, supported, and acknowledged in the workplace?  On the one hand, taking a proactive stance supporting workplace vaccination could be…

We recently spoke to a frustrated banker who was amazed that a regional bank was trying to poach his existing customer by quoting the borrower a credit spread of 1.65%. At such a thin credit spread, how would any bank make a profit, and why was this regional bank so irrational?  In this blog, we…

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,…