Correspondent Blog

Bankers often overlook how much money is stored in digital wallets away from their bank. While the amounts are relatively small on an individual basis, they are massive in aggregate. While some of these are stored at the banking-as-a-service banks such as Goldman Sachs, or The Bancorp, many digital wallets, like Starbucks, reside at the…

Robert Wilmers, the CEO of M&T, used to write one of the best bank investor letters. With Mr. Wilmers retired, we are down to two “must read” letters: Berkshire Hathaway’s and JP Morgan Chase’s (JPM). We feel that as community bankers, we can learn from Jamie Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPM) and from Warren…

Now that 1Q is in the books, if you are a public bank, you may have an earnings call coming up in some form. We want to better prepare you and get you ready for bank earnings call questions. To do that, we wrote a Python script to analyze a representative sample of earnings call…

We estimate that the average contractual loan commitment for term credit at community banks has decreased from just under five years in 2022 to just under three years currently. The primary reason for this shift is not a change in borrowers’ business models or banks’ preference for repricing term loans, but rather, borrowers’ decision to…

The 2024 annual Consumer Banking Association conference (CBA Live) took place in Washington, D.C., over three days last week. Overarching topics (by word count and sentiment) include the imperative for greater consumer protection, the required more significant effort to fight fraud, rapid innovation (particularly in A.I.), and the need to keep evolving your workforce. We…

The Federal debt is already impacting banking. Cyclical economic changes are driven by business cycles. These changes may occur swiftly, such as interest rate changes, inflation changes, or unemployment rate changes. Cyclical changes and their impact on the economy dominate the news and the attention of corporate boardrooms because they are immediate and need to…

The Biden Administration “Investing in America” agenda continues with many programs opening in June of this year. If your bank has not done so already, it should consider getting involved for the benefit of customers and shareholders. The various programs are wide ranging, complicated, and impactful which is why now is an excellent inflection point…

In our previous articles (here and here and here) we discussed some of the drivers of commercial relationship profitability. In this article, we consider and define relationship banking and how relationship banking can increase commercial loan profitability. What is Relationship Banking We define relationship banking as a model focused on a consultative banking approach.  Bankers…

Most banks completely ignore odd digit pricing. Instead of offering that competitive commercial loan for 7.00%, you offer the loan for 6.99%. Conversely, in a non-competitive situation, instead of offering a 6.20% rate, you offer a 6.23% rate and pick up three basis points per year. However, those banks that do are religious about it…

In two previous articles (here and here) we discussed how loan size and loan term affect the profitability of commercial loans.  We continue this theme of major drivers of loan and bank profitability and discuss the importance of cross-selling and upselling, and its impact on bank performance.  In this article, we consider the common features…

When it comes to bank planning, your strategic horizon has a huge influence on your success. Recently, we published a piece urging banks to set their strategic planning horizon out longer (HERE). We were inundated with questions and opinions. Our overarching point was that banks underperform, in part, because their strategic planning time horizon is…

In a previous article (HERE), we discussed several factors that drive loan and bank profitability. We covered in detail how and why community banks can increase loan size to improve return on assets (ROA) /return on equity (ROE).  In this article, we will consider how and why loan term is a significant driver of profitability…