Viewpoints: Community Banking
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2011
Approving Loans Is a Risky Role for Bank Directors
American Banker | Jun 15 The dilemma for community bank directors is to choose between minimizing their personal liability and the useful function that board reviews of individual loans can serve.
Stress Tests for Community Banks Would Be Mission Creep
American Banker | Jun 14 Internal stress-testing is a good practice, but regulatory use of hypothetical results to determine supervisory ratings or required capital levels would be destructive.
Interstate Branching Walls Tumble Down
American Banker | Jun 13 Changes as a result of Dodd-Frank should allow banks easier access to new markets nationwide and likely result in increased competition and industry consolidation.
Treasury Snookered Community Banks Again With Small-Business Fund
American Banker | Jun 9 The Small Business Lending Fund will not provide the boost to economic activity hoped for when it was enacted. Banks have again had the rug pulled out from under them.
Make Sure There's a Future for Community Banks
American Banker | Jun 7 Many community banks have drifted in recent decades from core small-business and consumer lending toward financing commercial real estate.
Don't Retire Your Grandfathered Thrift Charter
American Banker | Jun 2 Despite the loss of some advantages under Dodd-Frank, the unitary thrift holding company still offers more flexibility than the financial holding company variant.
Good Loan Officers Listen to Plumbers
American Banker | Jun 1 I've found that one of the great things about being in the banking industry is that it gives us both opportunity and reason to learn about how various businesses operate.
Michaels Breach is Warning on the Durbin Amendment
American Banker | May 26 If the Fed rule goes into effect, fraud costs will be funded not by interchange revenue or by retailers, but by consumers and the community banks.
Boot Camp: Hand-to-Hand Marketing
American Banker | May 4 The customer who would usually avoid taking a marketing piece will readily accept recipes and coloring pages for children — "sponsored" by the bank on the back of the flier.
The Community Bank Is No Spotted Owl
American Banker | Apr 26 Where is the threat to the survival of independent community banks — other than increased opportunity to sell out at higher prices, which will continue to make many disappear?
Home Loan Bank Proposal Off the Mark
American Banker | Apr 20 This proposal could remove a critical source of liquidity throughout the country — member institutions could be required to hold at least 10% of their assets in mortgages.
Mistakes Happen, But Good Recoveries Are Rarer
American Banker | Apr 14 I have observed that many banks do a generally poor job recovering from mistakes. People who have been victimized by banks are looking for three things in the wake of a mistake.
Nice, Cozy Branch. But Who's Going?
American Banker | Apr 8 Regardless of what the branches of the future look like, the "banker of the future" will almost assuredly be the human interface of an online operation.
Regulations Are Burying Small Banks Alive
American Banker | Mar 31 The 2,300-page bill will heap at least 10,000 pages of new regs on community banks while doing almost nothing to solve the problems that brought us to financial panic in 2008.
Help Customers Apply Their Financial Literacy
American Banker | Mar 30 Given the array and complexity of financial products, it's no wonder that consumers have a hard time managing their money. More choices and features are good, but only to a point.
Brokered Deposits' Broken Reg Structure
American Banker | Mar 24 There is growing consensus that the focus should be moved from a rigid definition of the means of gathering deposits to the characteristics of the deposits themselves.
Community Banks Can't Let Dodd-Frank's Repeal of Reg Q Stand
American Banker | Mar 16 An eleventh-hour amendment to Dodd-Frank that repealed Regulation Q could punish community banks that serve as the lifeblood for small businesses across the country.
Find Small-Business Leads via Social Media
American Banker | Mar 15 Various e-communications solutions offer banks an easy method for identifying small-business customers within their retail customer accounts and marketing to them.
CUNA Disputes Rate Analysis
American Banker | Mar 14 In a March 8 Viewpoint, Peter Duffy suggests that despite overwhelming evidence from rate-tracking services such as Datatrac, banks actually pay higher interest rates to depositors than credit unions do, and the reason is the higher deposit insurance costs credit unions incur. This analysis is quite misleading.
One Product, Two Prices, Many Losers
American Banker | Mar 10 The interchange provision included in the Dodd-Frank Act that theoretically acts as an exemption is an illusion. It will not work and cannot be made to work.
Banks Still Need a Robust Secondary Mortgage Market
American Banker | Mar 9 While the GSEs have become struggling entities in conservatorship with a doubtful future, the structure of the secondary mortgage market remains significant, especially for community banks.
Credit Unions Face Tough Test
American Banker | Mar 7 Because of much higher share insurance costs for credit unions than for community banks, credit unions will likely find it more difficult to remain competitive.
Durbin Hurts Small Banks? Nonsense
American Banker | Mar 4 If big banks get 75% less interchange, and small banks keep today's interchange rates, the small banks can charge lower fees, pay more interest, and give richer rewards.
If He Hollers 'Bad Fit,' Let Him Go
American Banker | Mar 2 My friend pointed out that in normal job markets, there was a tendency for bad hires, or people no longer happy in their jobs, to leave the company on their own. Now, his problems are twofold.
What's Delaying a Change in SBA 504 Loans?
American Banker | Feb 22 The somewhat inexplicable delay adds to the negative perception the SBA has had, while compounding the belief that small-business help from the government is just lip service.
Debit Exemption for Small Banks Won't Work
American Banker | Feb 18 Dodd-Frank shifts control over routing debit card transactions from issuers to merchants, allowing them to bypass small financial institutions, negating any benefit for exempt community banks.
Regulators Are Micromanaging Community Banks
American Banker | Feb 15 "Time for a Separate Regulatory Tier for Small Banks" (Jan. 26) was on the money about the current regulatory environment and how it is impacting community banks and the overall economic recovery (or lack thereof). You have captured, with great accuracy, what community banks are facing.
Train or Get Train Wrecks
American Banker | Feb 2 Properly training front-line employees before deploying them requires planning. It's far less expensive in the long run than making your customers pay for that training with their patience.
A Better Tech Solution for Community Banks
American Banker | Jan 31 Today's community banker lives in a world of evolving technology solutions. Working with a correspondent service provider can give small banks an edge over their larger rivals.
Viewpoint: Leverage Limits Hurt Credit for Small Business
American Banker | Jan 18 Treating all loans alike unnecessarily harms small businesses. Most are innocent bystanders, but high administrative expenses keep their loans from generating strong returns.
Viewpoint: Taking More Care About Allocating Capital
American Banker | Jan 11 Commercial banks rarely asked a customer to leave if the profitability of the account was underwater. Those days are gone. Capital is scarce, and every penny must be put to work.
Viewpoint: Improving the Connotation of 'Banker'
American Banker | Jan 5 Today most of the people working in financial services are "good bankers." But public opinion and media coverage of the worst of our industry has reflected on everyone.
Column: Give Them What They Can't Get on the Smartphone
American Banker | Jan 5 Technology doesn't slant the playing field. It levels it. In our industry, technology and pricing are actually the simplest things to copy. Over time, they do not differentiate.
Viewpoint: Take a Methodical View of Expense Cuts
American Banker | Jan 3 If banks periodically follow these guidelines to revise their plans and adjust their cost structures, they will be ready to respond to almost all evolving market conditions.
2010
Viewpoint: Wanted: A CEO Who Can Save a Bank
American Banker | Dec 7 Here's what we offer the bank CEO: the hardest work imaginable; an uncertain long-term future; potential personal and board liability for their actions, regardless of their tenure.
Feedback: FHLB System Performed as Intended in Crisis
American Banker | Dec 2 Re: "FHLB System's Rationale Erodes as Advances Dwindle" Nov. 29. This article and the online survey on the relevance of the Federal Home Loan banks did not tell the whole story.
Viewpoint: Get Data Ready for Changes in CRA
American Banker | Dec 2 The reality is that, if more institutions had been required to comply with CRA, bad loans probably would not have been made because CRA-reporting institutions are highly regulated.
Viewpoint: Look More at Customers, Less at Products
American Banker | Nov 17 Executive management will need to resolve simmering issues with performance measurement, given the bank emphasis on splintered metrics centered on individual products.
Feedback: Current Home Loan Bank System Works
American Banker | Nov 16 Re: "Viewpoint: Harness Home Loan Banks for Job Creation" Nov. 10. I concur with Mr. Hurley that the Federal Home Loan Bank System played a critical role in providing liquidity during the financial crisis. I cannot, however, agree with the approach he proposes to restructure the Home Loan Bank System.
Viewpoint: A 3-Point Plan to Recapitalize Minority Banks
American Banker | Nov 8 Structured real estate sales, private-equity investment and the recently enacted small-business lending program can recapitalize minority banks and position them for the future.
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