Correspondent Blog

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…

In our previous article (here) we analyzed the data on community bank M&A and performance, and we concluded that there is no relationship between community bank size and profitability, as measured by return on equity (ROE).  While superficially it makes sense that bigger is better, size itself does not lead to better bank performance.  Combining…

In Q2/24 the average return of asset (ROA) for community banks (under $10B in assets) was 1.08%.  But within the community banking sector, performance varied among banks significantly and a large swath of banks need to improve ROA.  While the average ROA was 1.08%, approximately 5.7% of community banks reported negative ROA.  Another 16.2% of…

Banking is woefully inefficient. There is a myriad of manual processes that take place everyday in banking driving up unit economics and causing the average bank to operate with a 77+% efficiency ratio. To be competitive in the future, banks need to be operating at an efficiency ratio of below 40%. Part of the issue…

In Q2/24 the average return on assets (ROA) for community banks (under $10B in assets) was 1.08%, with an average ROE of 10.44%.  But within the community banking sector, performance varied among banks significantly.  We analyze the drivers of ROA for the community bank segment last quarter and consider what financial variables explain bank performance….

Most community bankers we talk believe they will get a boost to bank performance with declining short-term rates.  The thinking is that a lower Fed Funds rate will mitigate credit risk, spur loan demand and potentially soften competition for deposits, leading to wider NIM and more profitability.  Unfortunately, the empirical evidence shows otherwise.  While the…

Because of the option to add or remove deposit balances over time, deposit management is one of the more complicated endeavors in banking. Lending, by comparison, is largely a one dimensional supply vs. demand problem. Building better deposit performance is more complicated. Add a three month CD option for your customers and the duration of…

FDIC-insured “Problem Banks” list has been increasing over the past two years.  For the community banking industry (banks under $10B in assets), this is particularly troubling as the number of community banks earning negative return on equity (ROE) spiked to 237 institutions in Q1/24, or 5.71% of all community banks. Bank ROE is now a…

Bankers have been taught to diversify their loan portfolio to reduce idiosyncratic (individual borrower) risk and to stabilize earnings. The thinking is that diversification-induced lending leads to banking resiliency. We believe that while lending diversification leads banks to lend more in normal times (especially for banks over $50B in assets) and does benefit the general…

The “Three-Body Problem,” currently made popular by our new favorite author, Cixin Liu, is the concept of instability when three similar-sized celestial objects interact. The problem is currently unsolvable. Banking has a similar physics problem when management juggles strategy, risk/profitability, and customer behavior. This article will discuss the challenge of managing three potentially opposing forces…

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…