Correspondent Blog

With an inverted yield curve, borrowers have a pricing advantage to lock in long-term fixed-rate loans, while lenders strongly desire to limit loan duration.  One possible solution to this dichotomy is for banks to offer interest rate swaps to hedge individual loans.  This article will review domestic banks’ adoption of interest rate swaps.  Next week’s…

The yield curve is currently inverted, and the FOMC may take a pause at its next meeting in June.  Uncertainty about the evolution of the economy and the path of future interest rates and the unusual inverted yield curve shape affords a prime opportunity for bankers to provide sound, trusted advice to clients.  This is…

Last week, we published an article [here] discussing how fair value accounting for assets and liabilities may have prevented the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, even if sound risk mitigation practices were not resolutely embraced by management.  We argued that valuing assets at historical value or measuring net interest margin (NIM) is not only a…

Analysts, regulators, legislators, and bankers have been attributing the root cause of SVB’s failure in the past month.  Some blame the dilution of the Dodd-Frank provisions, others the lack of oversight by regulators, and others still blame social media for exacerbating the deposit run.  The root cause of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) failure is poor…

Banking has now arrived at a speed that it cannot handle. While there have always been problems in banks’ asset-liability models (ALM) and liquidity stress test models, the current environment exacerbates this problem. Recent bank failures hurting public perceptions, the current market trends of higher rates, Quantitative Tightening, digital banking, social media, and a flight…

In recent articles (here and here), we discussed why banks that take the interest rate movement risk demonstrate lower performance as measured by return on assets (ROA). Empirical evidence, historical bank failures, and common sense teach us that many risks do not translate to higher yields. The second article compared and contrasted community banks’ pay-for-risk…

Over the last 15 years, an ever greater percentage of community banks have embraced some form of interest rate hedging.  Approximately 1,000 banks in the country use some form of hedging products to manage risk, generate fee income, or provide product offerings demanded by their customers.  Most of the top 100 banks (by asset size)…

Last week the Federal Reserve raised the Fed Funds rate by another 75 basis points – that was no surprise to the market.  However, in Powell’s unscripted remarks at the press conference, he stated that interest rates have reached a “neutral level.”  The market reacted to those words with equities and bonds both rallying.  We…

Last week we discussed how lenders might use swaps, caps, floors, and collars to help borrowers manage borrowing costs.  We outlined how the market values swaps and volatility instruments (like caps and floors), and we reviewed the fundamental reasons for how and why these hedging instruments are applied to commercial loans.  In this article, we…

Last week’s FOMC Meeting resulted in an increase in short-term interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) and projected seven rate hikes in 2022 and another four hikes in 2023.  The FOMC projects the Fed Funds rate to reach 1.875% by the end of the year and 2.75% next year (see DOT plot below).  However,…

The FOMC’s recent hawkish pivot and indications of multiple rate hikes in 2022 have created market volatility and an increase in longer-term interest rates. In a period of rapid change (or high volatility), we see about 50% of banks fall into a common trap of mispricing their commercial credits.  This loan pricing mistake does not…

The graph below demonstrates loan repricing changes quarter-over-quarter from June 2020 to June 2021 for banks in three asset bands (under $1B, $1-3B, and over $25B).  The top three stacks of the bars show fixed-rate loans that reprice 3-5 years, 5-15 years, and over 15 years.  The bottom three stacks show floating and adjustable-rate loans. …