Correspondent Blog

Last week (HERE), we looked at how deposit account tiering is used, some of the objectives that banks might employ, and the effectiveness of tiering in total. As discussed last week, many banks tier without objective, without data, and without supportive marketing, thus rendering the methodology worthless and possibly hurtful. We challenged several commonly held…

Focusing on uninsured deposit performance is a hot topic among investors, analysts, and regulators. The concern is grounded in data as higher balance accounts are more interest rate and risk-sensitive than lower balance accounts. While every bank is now tracking the general metric, only a few banks monitor deposit performance in the category. That is…

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…

In the quest for deposits, one successful tactic at top-performing banks is to target the right types of customers. While desiring to bank everyone in your community is noble, it can be a poor use of resources. Some customers offer better returns because they use more banking services and have more deposit balances. Not to…

In a recent article (here), we discussed why banks that take risks to earn higher revenue demonstrate lower performance as measured by ROA.   Empirical evidence, historical bank failures, and common sense teach us that many risks do not translate to higher yields.  While in that blog, we specifically considered the risk-return tradeoff for credit risk;…

Most bankers are familiar with the concept of risk-return tradeoff, which states that potential return rises with an increase in risk.  Low-risk assets pay lower potential returns, whereas high-risk assets pay higher potential returns.  Further, some bankers are taught early in their careers that they are in the business of taking risks, and banks would…

It turns out that confidence is more valuable than capital. While we wrote about the root cause of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) HERE, the lessons of the current banking crisis go beyond interest rate risk management. While interest rate risk caused the most significant impact on value, several other factors contributed to…

Many community banks today are willing to underwrite real estate secured loans on just two metrics: debt-service-coverage ratio (DSCR) and loan-to-appraised value (LTV). Banks typically approve credits above 1.20x DSCR and below 75% LTV – with many loan-specific factors that may skew these acceptable levels. For competitive reasons, we see banks dipping to 1.10X DSCR,…

You can always tell a good banker by the way they handle their deposits. With loans, it’s hard to discern expert-level skills unless you know the market and the credit. Deposits, however, are pure. When we analyze a bank, it is typically the first thing we look for, as deposit pricing and structure are the…

Last week we highlighted the lessons that machine learning taught us about the Unified Deposit Formula (HERE). Embodied in the Unified Deposit Formula is a marketing and amplification equation. In this article, we expand on the lessons we learned from artificial intelligence regarding raising deposits and explore how we can better use the Formula, and…

If you are looking for insight into how artificial intelligence can help in banking, we give you the Unified Deposit Formula that can be used for raising deposits. Before using machine learning, we, like most bankers, thought about deposit pricing along a single dimension – price and sensitivity. However, it turns out that price and…

The art and science of optimized deposit gathering is a declining skill set among bankers. Banking schools don’t teach it, conferences don’t showcase it, and internal bank educators no longer train in the discipline. It is ironic as no other banking endeavor can build long-term franchise value like deposit gathering. Further, deposit gathering and its…