Five Challenges to Your Bank of the Future and Ideas to Overcome Them
I recently spoke at a Financial Managers’ Society (FMS) breakfast meeting on this subject and thought I would share my comments with you. With all of our anguish, torment, debate, […]
Lessons Learned: Banks that thrived during crisis grew loans slower prior to it.
The St. Louis Fed recently performed a study to uncover the characteristics of community banks that thrived during the financial crisis. Thriving banks were defined as under $10 billion in […]
Is branch profitability out the window?
About 10 years ago my firm analyzed the hundreds of branches in our profitability database to determine exactly what is “critical mass”. We sorted by pre-tax profit contribution as a […]
Guest Post: First Quarter Economic Update by Dorothy Jaworski
The Fed Goes Too Far First, let me say, we owe the Federal Reserve our gratitude. Their actions to ease in many ways during and after the financial crisis averted […]
Common Misperceptions: Community Banks are Beating the Behemoths
My firm constantly evaluates industry trends and happenings to formulate what we term our Industry Overview. Although a constant process involving hypothesis, research, and re-evaluation, we center our thinking annually […]
Let’s retake the mortgage market!
Community financial institutions are grappling with the recent and pending mortgage rules. We fear the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) and government’s tendency to fire a bazooka at an ant, […]
Customer Service… blah, blah, blah
My family recently shopped around our homeowners and auto insurance to ensure we were getting a fair shake. We used to use an insurance agent for life, auto, and homeowners. […]
It’s a Wonderful Life
This 1946 Christmas classic is a story about the impact one man made on his family, his business, and his community. It goes beyond the fate of the Bailey Building […]
Power to the People
I asked the head of commercial lending how best to turn the tide in business loan growth. His response: people. I asked the head of branches how to elevate the […]
The Grand Mishandling of Strategic Projections
After nineteen years in financial services, I am finally witnessing the tide turn in bank and credit union strategic planning. What once was an annual budgeting exercise, is now beginning […]