Jeff For Banks

OCTOBER 30, 2010

'"When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary." ~ William Wrigley, Jr. "We would have had more time to discuss strategic objectives if Jeff dispensed of his comic routine." So went a piece of feedback I received from a participant in a strategic planning session that I was moderating. My internal reaction. argue back, defend my position, convince myself that the problem is with the person giving feedback.

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Jeff For Banks

MAY 29, 2010

'Banking’s largest investment is in its people. I have recently written about how critical our people are to the bank’s success. Executives often lament to me about the lack of quality, experienced bankers in the marketplace. They recall fondly the days when large banks would put recent college graduates through management trainee programs, credit schools, and the like.

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Jeff For Banks

DECEMBER 20, 2010

'Banking has taken a beating in the media and court of public opinion in the past two years. Some of it has been unfair, particularly with how banks were associated with subprime mortgages (very few were originated by banks) and how community banks were lumped in with the practices of very large financial institutions (FIs). But if we are to be honest with ourselves, some of it is deserved and we should take positive steps to repair our image, better serve our customers, and lead us into the fut

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Jeff For Banks

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

'Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) were primary sponsors for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which was signed by President Obama on July 21, 2010. Rather than arrange for an actual interview with the lawmakers so they can give me non-answer answers, I envisioned how an interview with the esteemed gentleman might transpire.

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Jeff For Banks

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

'This blog post idea occurred to me several months ago but I have been hesitant to commit to print. My first inclination was to describe the main characters of the drama without actually naming them. This stems from the age-old maxim, "if you don''t have something nice to say.". But the third quarter improvement to profitability by both banks represents a return to the way it has been over the past decade. the smaller bank outperforms the larger one.

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Jeff For Banks

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

'On occasion I have the privilege of attending a banking conference in a swanky locale. Last month, I attended a gathering of Pennsylvania bankers at The Breakers in West Palm Beach, Florida. These conferences are typically chock full of opportunities for me to learn something. I feel it my duty to pass what I learn to you in the hope that you will benefit from it, as I have.

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Jeff For Banks

AUGUST 22, 2010

'My wife and I are in the throes of refinancing our mortgage. The impetus was trading down from a 5.875% rate to 4.375%. This week, we received our loan application package, that includes the Good Faith Estimate (GFE) of mortgage costs, on the lesser-known form HUD-GFE. Background information: Mortgage rates are at all-time lows due to continued economic weakness, Federal Reserve policy keeping short-term Fed Funds rates near zero, the Fed''s policy of buying government bonds in the open market

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Jeff For Banks

JUNE 24, 2010

'Economists and government officials continue to cite lack of lending activity as a key contributor to our economic malaise. At the same time, I keep hearing from bankers about the lack of credit-worthy borrowers and regulatory pressure regarding the quality of the bank loan portfolio. I am also seeing a rise in bank cash positions and a decline in business loan (C&I) portfolios (see chart).

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Jeff For Banks

JUNE 5, 2010

'My boss loosens up strategic planning retreats with funny stories and anecdotes. Below is one of my favorites. The commercial lender''s part is played by Jack Nicholson and the finance part is played by Tom Cruise from A Few Good Men. If you haven''t seen the movie or don''t remember the sequence, I have it embedded below. Enjoy! A FEW GOOD COMMERCIAL LENDERS Lender : "You want answers?

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Jeff For Banks

MARCH 22, 2010

'I recently read, and subsequently reviewed (see post link below), The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence. In that book, the authors cited FirstMerit Bank as an example of a financial institution that implements Nordstrom-like tenets throughout their company. One concept mentioned was a competition for Best Branch. This got me thinking of how community banks could create an objective incentive system for branch personnel to culminate in the awarding of “Best Branch”.

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Jeff For Banks

MARCH 9, 2010

'A few weeks ago, a nice woman from Sovereign Bank called our home with news that, based on our relationship with the bank, we were pre-approved for a home equity loan. The problem… my wife and I don’t bank at Sovereign. They called for our twenty year old daughter who had a checking account with them. As far as I knew, our daughter had no home to borrow against.

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Jeff For Banks

FEBRUARY 28, 2010

'I''m writing this post sitting in my car while my 11 year old warms up for a soccer match in Richmond, Virginia. Readers with children that participate in sports know too well of the gaps in time during weekend tournaments. Yesterday, to kill time, we roamed the aisles of the local Wal-Mart. This store was six months old. Along the wall at the checkout lanes there was a mini storefront dubbed "The Money Center".

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Jeff For Banks

JANUARY 29, 2010

'There is a lot of troubling discussion about what to do so the mortgage meltdown that occurred in late 2008 does not happen again. Public outrage was first directed at banks in general, then migrated upstream to the big "fat-cat bankers", i.e. those top 19 banks that were told to take TARP funds. Now, politicians and former Fed officials (namely, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker) are calling for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, that depression era law that separated commercial banking from in

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Jeff For Banks

DECEMBER 31, 2010

'Banking has taken a beating in the media and court of public opinion in the past two years. Some of it has been unfair, particularly with how banks were associated with subprime mortgages (very few were originated by banks) and how community banks were lumped in with the practices of very large financial institutions (FIs). But if we are to be honest with ourselves, some of it is deserved and we should take positive steps to repair our image, better serve our customers, and lead us into the fut

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Jeff For Banks

DECEMBER 26, 2010

'I recently read a funny post by Don Cooper on how he thought the birth of Jesus would have went if Joseph was able to tweet about it (see the link below). This got me thinking how a bank strategy session would go if we conducted it via Twitter. Below is an abbreviated tweet stream of how I envisioned it going down. @bankceo Welcome to our first ever strategy tweetup!

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Jeff For Banks

NOVEMBER 26, 2010

'Banking has taken a beating in the media and court of public opinion in the past two years. Some of it has been unfair, particularly with how banks were associated with subprime mortgages (very few were originated by banks) and how community banks were lumped in with the practices of very large financial institutions (FIs). But if we are to be honest with ourselves, some of it is deserved and we should take positive steps to repair our image, better serve our customers, and lead us into the fut

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Jeff For Banks

NOVEMBER 6, 2010

'A The title of this book compelled me to read it, and I''m a better consultant for having done so. Strategy consultants such as me focus on keeping clients at least 10,000 feet up when discussing where we want to go in the next five years. But this doesn''t mean that our knowledge base shouldn''t be in the weeds. This book does a deep dive into the weeds of balance sheet management.

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Jeff For Banks

OCTOBER 21, 2010

'What are the Markets Thinking? Bond markets have been the big winners in the third quarter. Rates have fallen to incredible lows; Pimco, a large money manager, has referred to them as “Eisenhower” lows because they were prevalent in the 1950s. Treasuries are the biggest winners of all with the 2 year yield now at 0.43%, the 5 year at 1.26%, and the 10 year at 2.49%; the 5 year and 10 year yields fell 75 and 58 basis points, respectively, since late June.

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Jeff For Banks

OCTOBER 2, 2010

'In a previous post I mentioned that my wife and I are refinancing our mortgage because of the extraordinarily low rates available (see link to that post below). As part of the process we received the Good Faith Estimate (“GFE”) of costs associated with obtaining a mortgage loan. A key and expensive component of the cost is title and settlement services.

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Jeff For Banks

AUGUST 12, 2010

'What’s Bothering the Markets? There used to be an old adage in the stock market: “sell in May and go away.” This year, it certainly seems to be the case. Stock markets did quite well this year into April then began to sell off relentlessly in May; in the meantime, bond markets moved higher, especially Treasuries, as investors sought the safety of bonds.

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Jeff For Banks

AUGUST 1, 2010

'Have you ever driven on a highway by yourself and forget, if even momentarily, the highway you were on and where you were going? I hope most of you answered yes or I have to make a doctor''s appointment. The same sensation you feel for that split second while driving is, at times, what I feel in some strategy sessions I am priveledged to attend. A common discussion in these strategy sessions is ''how do we grow''?

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Jeff For Banks

JULY 24, 2010

'A bank CEO once told me that peer groups get you to that lazy place. He was referring to being mediocre. Yet we continue to use peer groups in banking to guide us to where we want to go. I am not against peer groups. My company uses them to determine where a company is at a point in time. But because financial information on competitors is so readily available in banking (we must report to the FDIC our quarterly results and it is available to all), we become over-reliant on them.

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Jeff For Banks

JUNE 18, 2010

'Opinions are wide and varied on the subject of branching. Trends indicate that more customers are using electronic means to interface with their bank and are visiting branches much less. However, customer surveys continue to favor branch locations as a critical factor in determining where to bank. In the mid 1990''s, many industry professionals feared branch extinction.

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Jeff For Banks

JUNE 12, 2010

'A The Elizabethtown Public Library should send me Christmas cards because I don''t seem to be able to read a book in the allotted time. This generates late fees, manna from heaven for a public library. What it also does is force me to choose the books I read wisely because I don''t read as many as others. In this context, Being Strategic by Erika Andersen is an odd choice.

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Jeff For Banks

MAY 22, 2010

'Change is difficult. Consider the difficulty in changing our own behaviors. A friend of mine that runs fitness clubs on Florida’s Gold Coast told me that it can be more effective to increase weight training in my workout regiment if I want to shed some pounds because muscle burns calories. This required me to rethink and change my workout routine. The end result: I decreased my cardio workout and increased weight training five measly minutes.

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Innovation