Sweat the big stuff: Interest Rate Risk
I have been thinking about interest rate increases for some time now. The Fed lowered the Fed Funds rate to a target of 0 – 25 bps in December 2008. […]
Banking School: The ivory tower could be yours.
I am sitting at Gate 124 in Orlando waiting for my ride home from a long journey. Prior to Orlando, it was Dallas. In Dallas, I taught bank profitability and […]
Risk Adjusted Return on Capital (RAROC) for Financial Institutions
How do you measure the profitability of lines of business, products, or customers? The simplest form is in dollars. But does that measure the profits against the investment required to […]
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 […]
Banker Quotes: As Told to Me v3
I learn a lot from bankers as I visit their offices, speak to them on the phone or at industry events. Occasionally they will offer an insight that I think […]
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 […]
Job Description: Branch Manager
I frequently hear lamentations about the gap between the performance expectations of community financial institution (FI) personnel and performance results. A frequent challenge is that performance expectations are not documented […]
Best Book Ever on Word of Mouth and Direct Mail Marketing
I hope the title of this post compelled you to read its contents. If so, I suppose you are expecting me to offer my opinion on the most recent thought […]
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, […]
In Pursuit of Return on Equity
When performing ratio analysis to determine a company’s profitability we should remember that a ratio has at least two data points: a numerator and a denominator. It doesn’t matter if […]