Employee Retention: Keep the Keepers
You have a highly valued employee, and they quit. Why? The boss? The culture? The pay? I’m sure if I searched for credible sources, I would get some version of one or a combination of the three. It is highly individualized. But what is universal is that each financial institution has employees that are highly […]
IMO: How To Make Telecommuting Work in Banks
Schlepping to the office five days a week is enough to make employees, or would be employees, reconsider working for you. This is particularly true in urban areas, where 20 miles might equal an hour commute. Or in growing families, where daycare costs might eat their pay check. In comes telecommuting. And in an era […]
Bankers: Don’t Buy the Hype. Let Fintech Equity Investors Bear the Cost of Experimentation.
When JPMorgan Chase released its 2016 annual report, in which the celluloid CEO Jamie Dimon proudly acknowledged spending nearly $10 billion on technology, the talking heads erupted. Ten billion! Must be good. Jamie does it. And from that moment the conventional wisdom was and is: community banks can’t compete. I just heard it on Friday. […]
Financial Institutions: What Drives Value v2
In a follow up to my last post on the subject, that was driven by my friends from Performance Trust, I was asked in the comments section of that post if there was a correlation between non-interest bearing checking accounts and price-to-tangible book multiples. That nugget was asked by Mike Higgins, a bank consultant from […]
Is the Tail Wagging the Dog at Your Institution?
In nearly every process improvement engagement conducted by TKG, we find a tail wagging the dog. This occurs when either the sales or operational side of the bank dominate, take, or have control. It is largely the result of where the power lies within an organization below the President and CEO. The Sales Side In […]
TMIB Lite: Welcome to Matt Prosseda
Host: Sharon Lorman, Vice President Cohosts: Bob Kafafian, President and CEO and Matt Prosseda, Managing Director Podcast Show Notes: Our This Month In Banking (TMIB) podcast features discussion with colleagues and other industry thought leaders on interesting banking news that happened this month. TMIB will be available on the last Wednesday of every month here, […]
Bank Innovation: Three Ideas
I usually take more time researching blog posts than writing them. Today is an exception. Rather than searching reputable sources for how this bank or that bank innovates, I thought I would give it to you straight from the gut. Because experience tells me that bankers are struggling with innovation. There is so much buzz […]
What’s the “Process” of “Process Management”?
One of the adages that became popular over the last decade is “Manage the process; Measure the results”. Executives have found that, like most such “easy to roll off the tongue” clichés, the reality of “managing the process” is much more difficult than it sounds. In fact, managing the results, at least from the executive […]
Hard to Believe it’s Been 10 Years!
On November 1, 2011, The Kafafian Group (“TKG”) celebrated its 10 Year Anniversary as an independent company. But actually, our history goes back to the early 1980’s. TKG HISTORY The seeds of TKG were planted at First National State Bank of New Jersey (“FNSB”) in the late 1970’s. FNSB was eventually merged into First Fidelity…First […]
A Practical Approach to Reducing Operating Expenses
In the present economic environment, revenue growth is becoming much more difficult to attain, net interest margins are under pressure, and compliance costs are on the rise. In these challenging times, it is imperative that community financial institutions control operating expenses without sacrificing service levels. Reducing costs can have an immediate impact on the bottom-line, […]