Correspondent Blog

It is around this time before a presidential election that bankers start to ponder how the results of the election will affect credit, interest rates, and the general business environment.  The stock and the acceptable answer is that presidents get too much credit when the economy does well and too much blame when it slumps. The complex…

If you are like 90% if banks out there, chances are your strategic planning process is not all that effective. Chances are your strategic planning process is a good budgeting exercise, but a poor driver of strategy. It likely your current strategic plan contains something about growth, geographical expansion, and digital transformation. You could exchange…

How Community Banks Protect NIM We feel that community banks have four significant attributes that can be successfully used to differentiate their brand against competitors in the market.  Borrowers find these four attributes valuable, and borrowers are willing to pay above market rate to purchase these attributes.  But community banks must understand what these attributes…

Without approving the HEALS or HERO Acts, Congress gave little reason for banks to delay their Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Forgiveness program. As such, many banks, like ourselves, launched on the 10th. With a couple of weeks of testing and processing, we thought it might be helpful to give an update that can hopefully inform…

Community banks face a new and unfamiliar underwriting risk – an epidemiological disruption that has limited visibility and short history that affects both free cash flow and collateral values.  In addition to debt yield, debt service coverage ratio, and property values, banks now need to understand how all of these credit parameters are going to…

It is not a question of “if” it is only a question of “when” you will start deploying chat and chat automation at your bank. It should be on your radar screen for several reasons, the first of which is that it will soon be the fastest growing and the most preferred communication channel among…

We sent out a survey to several thousand community bankers across the country to understand bankers’ concerns, challenges, and opportunities in the current business environment.  We feel that organizing an exchange of ideas and sharing of strategies is beneficial to many bankers. We also offered resources (videos, white papers, policies, marketing material, online proposal generators,…

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…

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…

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…

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…