Current Benefits of Banking Legal Cannabis Businesses

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While historically viewed as “strange bedfellows,” more financial institutions are offering services to cannabis businesses across the country. Though their worlds may seemingly look quite different, both are highly regulated, cash-intensive industries that can solve challenges for each other.

From the cannabis operator perspective, the benefits of a strong banking partner are straightforward. This relationship offers a safe place to store the intake from cash-heavy sales, a way to make tax and other payments electronically and the ability to facilitate direct deposits for employees. Additionally, other opportunities for banks include loan opportunities and additional benefits such as partnerships with human resources/payroll, payments and insurance are becoming more common.

The benefits for financial institutions, however, are ever-evolving. Up until this year, banks primarily looked at cannabis customers as a service relationship. “I’ll take care of your business needs, and you’ll pay me service fees for doing that.” But what we at Green Check have seen over the past several months is that these relationships are starting to look far more traditional. That means financial institutions that are willing to bank, and truly work with, the cannabis businesses in their market will encounter a far bigger opportunity.

Let’s start with low cost deposits. The federal funds rate is up. Many financial institutions are staving off the certificate of deposit pricing wars by paying higher annual percentage yields (APYs), and the overall cost of funds is inching up daily. The standard play here is often to seek out commercial customers. When we look at cannabis deposits in that light, the cost of funds is most often less than 1%. That could certainly help in those asset-liability committee meetings.

Next we have fee revenue. We’ve all had that conversation around the boardroom table about replacing overdraft fee income with other options to keep noninterest income from plummeting. Opening up the traditional suite of commercial services to the cannabis industry gives a financial institution a fresh new market segment to approach, along with the additional business service fees from those new opportunities.

And what about lending? An increasing amount of our financial institution clients have begun lending to the cannabis industry. It’s often one of the first questions that cannabis operators ask when seeking out a new banking relationship, making it quickly a table stakes option. One way for banks to step lightly into lending is to begin with the smaller lending opportunities such as unsecured line of credit facilities, or even equipment financing: loans that are less than $1 million, with less complex collateralization. Other financial institutions that aren’t able to take on the larger real estate loans and build-out financing can be a participant with a lead bank who has more experience in this area.

Far from strange bedfellows, these two industries can work together synergistically. In this current high rate environment, they need each other now more than ever. However, it’s essential that any bank wanting to offer services to this complex, rapidly expanding industry seeks proper guidance. Seeking experienced help from a reliable cannabis banking firm should be your bank’s first step in reaping the benefits of working with legal cannabis.

3 Principles to Promote a Bank Culture of Innovation

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Many bank leaders I talk to are very aware of the importance of innovation in the face of a fast-paced, changing environment. Yet, they have trouble promoting change and adopting more modern and efficient processes and technology — contributing to the struggle of making their bank more innovative. While every institution is slightly different, I wanted to share a few practical approaches to achieve internally led innovation that were very effective during my 12 years at Alphabet’s Google and another six working with the most innovative community and regional banks.

A recent survey from McKinsey & Co. found that 84% of CEOs understand innovation is imperative to achieve growth, yet a mere 6% are satisfied with the level of innovation within their organizations. These numbers reinforce that executives have the desire to promote innovation, but continue to struggle with execution and strategy.

One of the main problems I see institutions having in their typical approaches to innovation is the reliance on external paid consultants instead of activating an existing resource within their bank: their own employees. Employees already have a deep understanding of issues that both they and customers experience with the existing services and technology stack and are in a unique position to generate ideas for improvements. Not to mention they are also highly motivated to drive these innovations to a successful completion.

Embracing this approach of where the innovation most likely comes will enable bank leadership to focus on creating an environment that is conducive for innovation. Here are three practical suggestions executives and boards should consider:

1. Make it “Safe” to Fail
The foundation of a successful bank business model includes managing risk, such as balancing the downside of defaulting loans with the benefit of interest income on performing loans. And just like it is impossible to benefit from interest income without risking the principle, it is not possible to innovate without trying some things that, in retrospect, do not work out as originally planned.

The key here is to make sure everyone in the organization knows it’s OK to try things and sometimes fail. Without trial and error, there is no reward. Organizations that minimize the negativity around failure and view it as an opportunity to become better are often the ones that are able to move forward and innovate.

2. Encourage “Bottom-Up” Ideation
Most are familiar with “top-down” change that stems from leadership teams and management. However, this approach makes it harder to innovate; in many cases, it ignores the unique context that front line employees have gleaned. These employees use the bank software and speak with customers, giving them a unique and very valuable perspective. They know what is causing pain and what modifications and improvements would make customers happier. The key to promoting innovation is to extend the opportunity for ideation to all employees in a “bottom-up” approach, allowing their voices to be heard while embracing and appreciating their creativity and insight.

Giving employees a safe space to voice their ideas and an opportunity to provide feedback is at the core of innovation. Executives can achieve this by shifting the organizational process from a one-pass, top-down approach to a two or more-pass approach. This is front line employees can propose ideas that management reviews and vice versa: management proposals are reviewed by the same front line employees for feedback. Management proposals’ are then refined to reflect the employee feedback. This allows management to incorporate all relevant context and makes everyone feels part of the process.

3. Enable an Agile Approach
While planning everything down to the smallest detail may seem like the safer option, it is important that boards and management teams accept that the unexpected is inevitable. Rather than trying to foresee every aspect, it is important to incorporate an agile mindset. An agile approach starts small and observes, adjusts course based on those observations and continues to course correct through repeated observation/adjustment steps. This allows the organization to absorb the unforeseen while still continually making progress. Over time, the pressure to be correct all the time will dissipate; the bank will feel more in control and enabled to make appropriate adjustments to increase the chances of the best possible outcome.

The rate of change around us and within financial services is steadily increasing; it is impossible to predict and plan for what will happen in the next few years. Instead, it is crucial that bank boards and management teams embrace adaptability as a critical element of corporate survival.

The Future of Commercial Banking

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Most of the attention around bank digitalization has focused on the retail experience. Retail banks have readily embraced technology to enhance the customer experience. But commercial banking can catch up, complete with business insights that increase customer engagement and add real value. In doing so, a bank can elevate its position from trusted transactional banker to strategic business partner.

In the U.S., there were more than 32 million small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) in 2021, according to the Small Business Administration. Collectively they create 1.5 million jobs annually, according to Fundera, citing SBA data; this is around 64% of total new jobs. But the stakes of owning an SMB are high: almost half fail within the first five years and 20% fail within the first year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most failures cite cash flow as a major contributor to failure. Banks can and should do more to help.

With a wealth of transactions data at their fingertips, banks can help SMBs understand their cash flow and manage their liquidity better. But transactional data is only part of the story. If banks can access their customer data held on internal accounting systems, they can obtain a holistic view of cash flow, gain unique insight into how their customer’s business is running, and offer help exactly when and where it’s needed.

Bank customers are increasingly willing to share their data: 82% of SMBs say they are willing to share data with their primary financial provider, particularly in return for business benefits, according to FIS research conducted in 2022. Moreover, we found that 66% of SMBs are interested in trusted advisory services. The time is right for such services.

Technically, it is quite simple for a bank to orchestrate data flows. Over 64% of SMBs in the U.S. use accounting software, such as Quickbooks, Xero, Sage and a handful of others, minimizing the amount of integration work and number of interfaces needed. So how can banks help SMBs businesses survive and prosper?

The Ideal SMB Banking Overview
A combined view of transactional bank data and accounting data allows banks to help an SMB understand exactly how much cash it has now and whether it has sufficient liquidity to meet upcoming obligations.

Incorporating accounting data can pull in open invoices and bills combined with cash flow forecast to build an accurate picture of how money is flowing throughout the business and compute standard accounting ratios. Such information can give an SMB owner, most of which don’t have much knowledge of accounting, some valuable business insight into how their business is performing.

A snapshot of cash flows allows users to modeling future performance by using “what if” criteria. Users can set thresholds of a minimum cash position to eliminate financial shocks to the business. If cash shortfalls seem likely, the user can be prompted to transfer funds from account, consider credit options or arrange to speak with a banker.

Benefits for Banks
All of this information that’s available to the customer can also be accessed by a banker, who can help with financial decisions and offer advice. Although this may be an opportunity for a bank to sell products, the real benefit is to add value to the relationship and build customer loyalty.

With all the relevant information in one place, bankers can be better prepared for customer meetings and, if required, can meet customers where they are. With many bank branches being repurposed as advice centers, bankers can use tablets to review customer business plans either in branch, at a remote location or in a virtual meeting. Whatever the location, this is relationship banking at its very best.

Millennials are currently the largest group of bank customers, according to the American Bankers Association. In the wake of Covid-19, many have reflected on their career choices; some have launched new businesses and entrepreneurship is a goal for 56% of the cohort. These individuals have bank accounts, and many will need business banking either now or in future. They see little distinction between retail and commercial banking. Banks must acknowledge that the retail customers of today are the business owners of tomorrow.

Solving for Blind Spots in Bank M&A

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Mergers and acquisitions are a major driver of change and returns in the banking industry. As banking leaders head into mission-critical strategic planning sessions for 2023, now is the perfect time for boards and executives to map out the coming year’s organizational and budgetary priorities. Recognizing that M&A can be a principal platform for growth, what are the key considerations empowering banks of all sizes to increase their influence and scale their organizations?

Reducing Risk
Mitigating institutional risk is at the top of the list of priorities as banks begin exploring M&A opportunities. Ensuring your bank has a comprehensive plan, inclusive of division of labor, is critical for successful M&A. Does your bank have the right staff with expertise and experience at the planning table, so nothing gets missed?

Tapping into the knowledge base of current customers and how the bank plans to maintain those relationships is a smart first step. But what about potential prospects the bank wants to reach – what do those people want? What’s relevant to them?

Well-designed research programs are table stakes for successful M&A. Data on markets and prospects will give decision-makers insights beyond their customer base. Even if bank leaders feel familiar with a market, updated data-based intelligence provides a true picture of opportunity and risk, so banks can form a plan suited to their particular circumstances. Smart data will also help uncover if another financial company using similar branding and overlapping media, or presents other legal and reputational exposure before the deal is done. 

Enhancing Efficiency
Data and insights will also produce efficiencies in M&A by helping executives discover whether their brands and names bring unneeded baggage. Having a brand that requires exhaustive explanation can be an opportunity cost, resulting in time not spent focusing on a prospect’s needs and the bank’s options for meeting them. Likewise, marketing’s return on investment can be negatively impacted when brand elements are limiting or nondescript.

For example, brand names with specific vocations or cities may cause a prospect to wonder if that bank is truly designed to help someone like them; they may eliminate the bank from their list of options before exploring the institution’s breadth of services. Also, if banks with similar branding or name invest in advertisements or community sponsorships, a consumer may mistakenly assign the message or public relations value to a competitor because they miss the distinction between local banks with similar names.

Competitive research will help boards and executives take a comprehensive look at their brand to identify what parts of their story prospects don’t know and what is meaningful to them. Leveraging data can help ensure messages and communications are spotlighting parts of the brand story that will have the most resonance with consumers, and have distinct and competitive value propositions in that market.

While it’s true that a financial institution may have to change its name because of a merger, research will help identify names that represent a hurdle to overcome both legally and reputationally. In our experience, brand research can become a downstream activity executives assume they’ll take care of later, but we think of it as a critical part of due diligence. Further, a powerful research program helps ensure banks can make the most of the brand launch, when people may be more open to hearing a renewed brand story that’s relatable and relevant.

Targeting Growth
M&A allows institutions to elevate their expansion efforts and future-proof their organizations. Oftentimes when executives consider marketing and brand research in light of M&A, they point to customer satisfaction data. While this is an important measure for retention and engagement, a more comprehensive data set is indispensable to help ensure organizations aren’t operating on biases and blind spots.

Smart banks leverage robust research in the M&A process to help uncover opportunities, eliminate friction and help distinguish, define and differentiate their brands. A crucial component of retention and growth pre-and-post merger is employees. Research insights can predict potential turbulence and inform strategies to equip employees to champion change and maintain performance. They can also be key factors in recruiting the best talent to fuel growth in new markets.

While bank executives may be satisfied with their current positioning and their current markets, data-driven insights will help institutions leverage their assets and increase the influence of their brand in the merger process — allowing them to grow and go further.

A Look Inside Fifth Third’s ESG Journey

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Mike Faillo was recently promoted to the new role of chief sustainability officer at Fifth Third Bancorp, with a team focused on the Cincinnati-based regional bank’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) program, including its climate strategy and social and governance reporting. Faillo started his career in public accounting at PwC in 2008, just in time for the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the financial crisis. He spent the next several years auditing a trillion dollar bank, and then working on Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) stress tests and developing resolution plans.

Faillo says those experiences informed his journey to lead ESG at $211.5 billion Fifth Third. 

When he joined the bank’s investor relations team in 2019, he dug into Fifth Third’s ESG profile and learned that the organization wasn’t effectively telling its story. So with support from the bank’s executive leadership team, including Chairman and CEO Greg Carmichael, Faillo transformed Fifth Third’s corporate social responsibility report into a broader, data-driven report in 2020 that tells the bank’s complete ESG story. Faillo jokes that he went from writing about the death of a bank through living wills to the life of it in the ESG report.

In this edition of the Slant podcast, Faillo also discusses the need for agility and teamwork on ESG, and how he works across the organization to uncover opportunities for the bank. He also digs into the complexities of measuring carbon emissions, and why it’s a great opportunity to work with business clients to help them on their own journeys to net zero. And he addresses what’s easiest — and hardest — for banks to get right on ESG. The interview was conducted in advance of Bank Director’s Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference, where Faillo appears as part of a panel discussion, “How Banks Are Stepping Up Their ESG Plans.”

The Future of Banking in the Metaverse

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From Nike’s acquisition of RTFKT to Meta Platform’s Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg playing virtual pingpong, the metaverse has evolved from a buzzword into a way of doing business.

The metaverse could become a “river of entertainment in which the content and commerce flow freely,” according to Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Satya Nadella in “The Coming Battle Over Banking in the Metaverse.” Created by integrating virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and other technologies, the metaverse is a 3D virtual space with different worlds for its users to enhance their personal and professional experiences, from gaming and socializing to business and financial growth.

That means banking may ultimately come to play a significant role in the metaverse. Whether exchanging currencies between different worlds, converting virtual or real-world assets or creating compliant “meta-lending” options, financial institutions will have no shortage of new and traditional ways to expand their operations within this young virtual space. Companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and South Korea’s KB Kookmin Bank already have a foot in the metaverse. JPMorgan has the Onyx Lounge; Kookmin offers one-on-one consultations. However, banks will find they cannot operate in their traditional ways in this virtual space.

One aspect that might experience a drastic change is the branches themselves. The industry should expect an adjustment period to best facilitate the needs of their metaverse banking customers. These virtual bank branches will need to be flexible in accepting cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, blockchains and alternative forms of virtual currency if they are to survive in the metaverse.

However, not everyone agrees that bank branches will be that relevant in the metaverse. The idea is that online banking already accomplishes the tasks that a branch located in the metaverse might fulfill. Another issue is that there is little current need for bank branches because the migration to the metaverse is nascent. Only time will tell how banking companies adapt to this new virtual world and the problems that come with it.

Early signs point to a combination of traditional and new banking styles. One of the first products from the metaverse is already shining a light on potential challenges: The purchase and sale of virtual space has significantly changed over the past year. In Ron Shevlin’s article, “JPMorgan Opens A Bank Branch In The Metaverse (But It’s Not What You Think It’s For),” he writes, “the average investment in land was about $5,300, but prices have grown considerably from an average of $100 per land in January to $15,000 in December of 2021, with rapid growth in the fourth quarter when the Sandbox Alpha was released.”

The increasing number of virtual real estate transactions also means the introduction of lending and other financial assistance options. This can already be seen with TerraZero Technologies providing what could be described as the first mortgage. This is just the beginning as we see opportunities for the development of banking services more clearly as the metaverse, its different worlds and its functions and services mature.

Even though the metaverse is still young and there are many challenges ahead, it is clear to see the potential it could have on not only banking, but the way we live as we know it.

Understanding the Cannabis Banking Opportunity

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The legal cannabis industry is growing exponentially each year, creating extraordinary opportunities for financial institutions to offer services to this largely underbanked, niche market.

Revenue from direct marijuana businesses alone is expected to exceed $48 billion by 2025, part of a larger $125 billion cannabis opportunity that includes hemp, CBD and other support businesses, according to information from Arcview and BDS Analytics.

In the last few years, the number of banks providing services to cannabis businesses has increased, along with an expansion of the products they are offering. Financial institutions are moving far beyond being “a place to park cash’ which defined the pioneer era of cannabis banking. Today, our bank clients are approaching the industry as a new market to deploy all of their existing products and services, including online cash management, ACH origination, wire transfers, lending, insurance, payments and wealth management. Additionally, a contingent of banks are trailblazing bespoke solutions.

For banks wanting to better understand what the current cannabis banking opportunity looks like, we recommend starting by:

Exploring the Entire Cannabis Ecosystem
A common pitfall for banks considering a cannabis line of business is failing to grasp the true market opportunity. It’s important that bankers explore the entire supply chain: growers, cultivators, manufacturers, distributors and delivery operations and public-facing retail and medical dispensaries that make up the direct cannabis ecosystem.

Beyond that, there is a supporting cast of businesses that service the industry: armored couriers, security firms, consultants, accountants, lighting companies, packaging companies, doctors who prescribe medical cannabis, and many more. These are not plant-touching businesses, but they require additional scrutiny and often struggle with non-cannabis-friendly institutions. All this is in addition to the significant hemp market, which represents an additional $40 billion opportunity by 2025.

Thinking Beyond Fees
Aside from low-cost deposits, many financial institutions initially entered this niche line of business for additional fee income. While the industry still provides strong fee opportunities, including account opening fees, monthly account fees per license, deposit fees and fees for services such as ACH and cash pickup, these can vary greatly from market to market and will decrease as more financial institutions build programs.

Instead of limiting their focus to fees and deposits, banks should understand the full breadth of the services and solutions they can offer these underserved businesses. Most services that a bank provides their average business customer can be offered to legal cannabis businesses — and there is a significant opportunity to create additional services. We believe there are products this industry needs that haven’t been created by banks yet.

Banks thinking about where to start and what products to add should consider common challenges that legal cannabis businesses face: electronic payment products, cash logistics, fair lending and the numerous difficulties around providing opportunities to new business owners and social equity entrepreneurs. Bankers should become familiar with the industry; find out what it’s most similar to — namely agriculture, food processing and manufacturing — as well as how it is unique. That’s where the real opportunity lies.

Building a Scalable Program
To safely service this industry and meet examiner expectations, banks need to demonstrate they understand the risks and institutional impact of banking cannabis and have the capabilities to accomplish the following, at a minimum:

  • Consistent, transparent and thorough monitoring of their cannabis business clients and their activity, to demonstrate that only state legal activity and the associated funds are entering the financial system.
  • Timely and thorough filing of currency transaction reports (CTRs) and suspicious activity reports (SARs).
  • Ability to gracefully exit the line of business, should the bank’s strategy or the industry’s legality change.
  • An understanding of the beneficial ownership structures, particularly when working with multi-state operators.

Performing these tasks manually is time consuming, prone to error and not suitable for scale. Technology allows banks to automate the most tedious and complicated aspects of cannabis banking compliance and effectively grow their programs. Look for technology that offers advanced due diligence during onboarding, detailed transaction monitoring, automated SAR/CTR reporting and account monitoring to ensure full transparency and portfolio management in your program.

Finding a Trusted Partner
When it comes to partners, banks must consider whether their partner can quickly adapt to changes in rules and regulations. Do their tools support visibility into transaction level sales data, peer comparisons and historical performance? Have they worked with your examiners? What do they offer to help banks service both direct and indirect businesses? Can they help their institutions offer new and innovative products to this line of business?

Banks weighing which partners they should take on this journey need to consider their viability for the long run.

The Future of Banking

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Open banking is bigger in the United States than it is in Europe, says Lee Wetherington, the senior director of corporate strategy for Jack Henry & Associates, one of the banking industry’s largest technology solution providers. For financial technology companies, that means an unlimited potential to access data, and offer products and services that customers would like or will like in the future.

Wetherington answers three questions in this video:

  • How can fintechs leverage open-banking rails to improve their offerings and reach?
  • What will the banking industry look like in 10 years?
  • Looking beyond 10 years, will there be a banking industry as we know it now?

The Next 5 Years in Banking Is Plumbing

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Of the 1,400-plus people wandering the halls of the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix last week during Bank Director’s Acquire or Be Acquired Conference, more than half wore ties and suit jackets. Roughly a quarter sported sneakers and hoodies.

Bankers mingled with fintech entrepreneurs in sessions on bank mergers and growth, followed by workshops and discussions with titles such as “Curating the Right Digital Experience for Your Customers.” It’s an embodiment of the current environment: Banks are looking to an increasing array of financial technology companies to help them meet strategic goals like efficiency and improved customer experience online and on a mobile device.

Investors are pouring money into the fintech sector right now, a spigot that is fueling competition for banks as well as producing better technology that banks can buy. Last year, venture capitalists invested $8.7 billion on digital banking, credit card, personal finance and lending applications, more than double the amount the prior year, according to Crunchbase.

At the conference, venture fund managers filtered through the crowd looking for bankers willing to plunk down money for funds devoted to start-up fintech companies. Many of them have found willing investors, even among community banks. In Bank Director’s 2021 Technology Survey, 12% of respondents said they had invested directly in technology companies and 9% said they had invested in venture funds in the sector. Nearly half said they had partnered with a technology company to come up with a specific solution for their bank.

It turned out that an M&A conference goes hand in glove with technology. More than half of all banks looking to acquire in Bank Director’s 2022 Bank M&A Survey said they were doing so to gain scale so they would have the money to put into technology and other investments.

“The light bulb has gone off,” said Jerry Plush, vice chairman and CEO of $7.6 billion Amerant Bancorp in Coral Gables, Florida, speaking at the conference for fintech companies one floor above, called FinXTech Transactions. Directors and officers know they need to be involved in technology partnerships, he said.

Even longtime bank investors acknowledge the shifting outlook for banks: John Eggemeyer, founder and managing principal of Castle Creek Capital, told the crowd that the next five years in banking is going to be about “plumbing.”

However, cobbling together ancient pipes with new cloud-based storage systems and application programming interfaces has proven to be a challenge. Banks are struggling to find the skilled employees who can ensure that the new fintech software they’ve just bought lives up to the sales promises.

Steve Williams, founder and CEO of Cornerstone Advisors, said in an interview that many banks lack the talent to ensure a return on investment for new bank-fintech partnerships. The employee inside a bank who can execute on a successful partnership isn’t usually the head of information technology, who is tasked with keeping the bank’s systems running and handling a core conversion after an acquisition. Engaging in a relationship with a new fintech company is similar to hiring a personal trainer. “They’re not going to just deliver you a new body,” Williams said. “You have to do the work.”

He cited banks such as Fairmont, West Virginia-based MVB Financial Corp. and Everett, Washington-based Coastal Financial Corp. for hiring the staff needed to make fintech partnerships work.

Eric Corrigan, senior managing director at Commerce Street Capital, said banks should consider whether their chief technology officer sits on the executive team, or hooks up the computers. “Rethink the people who you’re hiring,” he said.

Jo Jagadish, an executive vice president at TD Bank who spoke at the conference, has a few years of experience with bank/fintech partnerships. Prior to joining TD Bank USA in April 2020, she was head of new product development and fintech partnerships with JPMorgan Chase & Co. “You can’t do your job and a fintech partnership on the side,” she said in an interview. “Be focused and targeted.”

Jagadish thought banks will focus the next five years on plumbing but also improving the customer experience. Banks shouldn’t wait for the plumbing to be upgraded before tackling the user experience, she said.

Cornerstone’s Williams, however, thought the work of redoing a bank’s infrastructure is going to take longer than five years. “It’s going to be a slog,” he said. “The rest of your careers depends on your competency in plumbing.”

Plumbing may not sound like exciting work, but many of the bankers and board members at the conference were happy to talk about it. Charles Potts, executive vice president and chief innovation officer for the Independent Community Bankers of America, said that fintech companies and their software can put community banks on par with the biggest banks and competitor fintechs on the planet. Nowadays, community banks can leverage their advantage in terms of personal relationships and compete on the technology. All they have to do is try.

Bank Profitability to Rebound from Pandemic

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The Covid-19 pandemic has been a defining experience for the U.S. banking industry — one that carries with it justifiable pride.

That’s the view of Thomas Michaud, CEO of investment banking firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods, who believes the banking industry deserves high marks for its performance during the pandemic. This is in sharp contrast to the global financial crisis, when banks were largely seen as part of the problem.

“Here, they were absolutely part of the solution,” Michaud says. “The way in which they offered remote access to their customers; the way that the government chose to use banks to deliver the Paycheck Protection Program funds and then administer them via the Small Business Administration is going to go down as one of the critical public-private partnership successes during a crisis.”

Michaud will provide his outlook for the banking industry in 2022 and beyond during the opening presentation at Bank Director’s Acquire or Be Acquired Conference. The conference runs Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, 2022, at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix.

Unfortunately, the pandemic did have a negative impact on the industry’s profitability. U.S. gross domestic product plummeted 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020 as most of the nation went into lockdown mode, only to rebound 33.8% in the following quarter. Quarterly GDP has been moderately positive since then, and Michaud says the industry has recaptured a lot of its pre-pandemic profitability — but not all of it. “The industry pre-Covid was already running into a headwind,” he says. “There was a period where there was difficulty growing revenues, and it felt like earnings were stalling out.”

And then the pandemic hit. The combination of a highly accommodative monetary policy by the Federal Reserve Board, which cut interest rates while also pumping vast amounts of liquidity into the financial system, along with the CARES Act, which provided $2.2 trillion in stimulus payments to businesses and individuals, put the banking industry at a disadvantage. Michaud says the excess liquidity and de facto competition from the PPP helped drive down the industry’s net interest margin and brought revenue growth nearly to a halt.

Now for the good news. Michaud is confident that the industry’s profitability will rebound in 2022, and he points to three “inflection points” that should help drive its recovery. For starters, he expects loan demand to grow as government programs run off and the economy continues to expand. “The economy is going to keep growing and the pace of this recovery is a key part of driving loan demand,” he says.

Michaud also looks for industry NIMs to improve as the Federal Reserve tightens its monetary policy. The central bank has already begun to reverse its vast bond buying program, which was intended to inject liquidity into the economy. And most economists expect the Fed to begin raising interest rates this year, which currently hover around zero percent.

A third factor is Michaud’s anticipation that many banks will begin putting the excess deposits sitting on their balance sheets to more productive use. Prior to the pandemic, that excess funding averaged about 2.5%, Michaud says. Now it’s closer to 10%. “And I remember talking to CEOs at the beginning of Covid and they said, ‘Well, we think this cash is probably going to be temporary. We’re not brave enough to invest it yet,’” he says. At the time, many bank management teams felt the most prudent choice from a risk management perspective was to preserve that excess liquidity in case the economy worsened.

“Lo and behold, the growth in liquidity and deposits has kept coming,” Michaud says. “And so the banks are feeling more comfortable investing those proceeds, and it’s happening at a time when we’re likely to get some interest rate improvement.”

Add all of this up and Michaud expects to see an improvement in bank return on assets this year and into 2023. Banks should also see an increase in their returns on tangible common equity — although perhaps not to pre-pandemic levels. “We started the Covid period with a lot of excess capital and now we’ve only built it more,” he says.

Still, Michaud believes the industry will return to positive operating leverage — when revenues are growing at a faster rate than expenses — in 2022. “We also think it’s likely that bank earnings estimates are too low, and usually rising earnings estimates are good for bank stocks,” he says.

In other words, better days are ahead for the banking industry.