How to Design a Winning Capital Management Plan

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capital-4-22-19.pngThe significant downturn in bank stock prices witnessed during the fourth quarter of 2018 prompted a number of boards and managements to authorize share repurchase plans, to increase the amounts authorized under existing plans and to revive activity under existing plans. And in several instances, repurchases have been accomplished through accelerated plans.

Beyond the generally bullish sentiment behind these actions, the activity shines a light on the value of a proactive capital management strategy to a board and management.

The importance of a strong capital management plan can’t be overstated and shouldn’t be confused with a capital management policy. A capital management policy is required by regulators, while a capital management plan is strategic. Effective capital management is, in large part, an exercise in identifying and understanding future risks today. Capital and strategy are tightly linked — a bank’s strategic plan is highly dependent on its capital levels and its ability to generate and manage it.

There are a couple of guidelines that executives should bear in mind as they develop their capital management plans. First, the plan needs to be realistic and achievable. The windows for accessing capital are highly cyclical. There’s limited value in building a plan around an outcome that is unrealistic. Second, if there is credible information from trusted sources indicating that capital is available – go get it! Certain banks, by virtue of their outstanding and sustained performance, may be able to manage the just-in-time model of capital, but that’s a perilous strategy for most.

Managements have a number of levers available to manage capital. The key as to when and which lever to pull are a function of the strategic plan. A strong plan is predicated on staying disciplined but it also needs to retain enough nimbleness to address the unforeseen curveballs that are inevitable.

Share Repurchases
Share repurchases are an effective way to return excess capital to shareholders. They are a more tax-efficient way to return capital when compared to cash dividends. Moreover, a repurchase will generally lift the value of a stock through the reduction in shares outstanding, which should increase earnings per share and the stock price itself. Share repurchases are generally the favored mechanism of institutional owners and can make tremendous sense for broadly held and liquid stocks.

Cash Dividends
Returning capital to shareholders in the form of cash dividends is generally viewed very positively in the banking industry. Banks historically have been known as cash-dividend paying entities, and the ability and willingness to pay them is often perceived as a mark of a healthy and stable company. A company’s decision regarding whether to increase a cash dividend or to repurchase shares can be driven by the composition of the shareholder base. Cash dividends are generally valued more by individual shareholders than institutional shareholders.

Business Line Investment
Community banking at its core is a spread dependent business. The ability to diversify the revenue stream through the development or acquisition of a fee generating business can be an effective and worthwhile use of capital. Common areas of investment include mortgage banking, wealth management, investment products and services and insurance. Funding the lift out of lending teams can also be a legitimate use of capital. A recent development for some is investment in technology as an offensive play rather than a defensive measure.

Capital Markets Access
Effective capital management plans also consider the ability to access the capital markets. In the community banking space, accessing capital is not always a foregone conclusion. Over the past couple of years, the most common forms of capital available have been common equity and subordinated debt. For banks of a certain size and market cap, it’s a prudent capital management strategy to file a shelf registration, also known as form S-3, which provides companies with flexibility as to how and when they access the capital markets. The optionality provided by having a shelf registration far outweighs the concern that the shelf itself suggests a shareholder dilutive activity is on the horizon.

It’s important to note that these capital management activities can be utilized individually or in combination. An acquisition may necessitate the need to access the capital markets. Or given the relative inexpensiveness of sub debt, raising some for the purpose of a share repurchase could make sense. A strong capital management plan can allow a management team to be ready both offensively and defensively to drive their businesses forward in optimal fashion.

Information contained herein is from sources we consider reliable, but is not guaranteed, and we are not soliciting any action based upon it. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, based on interpretation of data available at the time of original publication of this article. These opinions are subject to change at any time without notice.

Why Great RMs Matter So Much

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manager-4-17-19.pngImagine you have given two commercial relationship managers (RMs) at your bank the same potential deal to work on.

Same credit worthiness. Same opportunity for cross-sell. The market is the same, the internal approval process is the same. So is the pricing technology they’re using.

Would the two RMs produce the same result?

Probably not. Even with all conditions being equal, the RMs working on it are not.

Some RMs are just better than others.

But how much better? Earlier this year, PrecisionLender looked for that answer. Our findings were published online in our report: “Measuring RM Performance: Proving Impact and Dispelling Myths.”

We delved into our database, which includes commercial relationships (loans, deposits and other fee-based business) from over 200 banks in the United States, from small community banks to the top 10 institutions. In addition to size, these banks are also geographically diverse, with headquarters in 35 states and borrowers in all 50.

We found three things.

  • The best RMs matter much more than we hypothesized.
  • They win on all fronts, without costly trade-offs.
  • They share common traits and tactics.

Right now it’s assumed that to gain in volume, an RM must give on price. By that logic, RMs with the thinnest margins should have the largest portfolios. Yet we found the RMs with the biggest portfolios aren’t compromising on price.

When normalizing for loan mix and looking at RMs in one line of business pursuing similar borrowers, we found the RMs winning the most volume were also earning the highest risk-adjusted spreads.

We found a similar lack of compromise when it came to risk. Some of the top RMs we studied managed to negotiate higher spreads on a higher-quality portfolio than their peers achieved on weaker-rated books.

Winning On Fees and Price
Most banks we looked at displayed a tremendous dispersion in fee incidence across their RMs. While market aggregate fees showed variance by product type, deal size and term, perhaps the most significant factor in fee performance was the RM.

That performance matters, because RMs who included fees achieved consistently higher risk-adjusted return on equity than those who did not.

To get those fees, top RMs didn’t have to give on price. In most sample banks, there was a positive correlation between spread and fees, largely due to RM talent. Those ranked at the top for fee penetration had above-average spreads. Those ranked near the bottom for fees were also the low performers on spreads.

With today’s thin credit margins, banks often lead with credit to win more ancillary business. RMs routinely justify below-target credit pricing by including an anticipated cross-sell.

Putting aside whether those cross-sell promises are fulfilled, it would be easy to assume relationships with non-credit revenue carry lower spreads. We found the opposite.

Our data suggests relationships with above-average cross-sell revenue tended to carry higher credit pricing than those with below-average cross-sell revenue. RMs often cited the strength of the relationship—thanks to a track record of delivering value—as the biggest reason.

How Do Great RMs Do It?
The evidence we’ve collected points to a set of best practices that top RMs have in common.

  • They act like trusted advisors instead of order takers.
  • They deliver tailored solutions.
  • They know what matters to the customer and the relative priorities.
  • They provide alternatives.
  • They maintain meaningful, ongoing communication.
  • They explain their pricing.
  • They leverage internal resources.
  • They implement performance-based pricing.
  • They are proactive in managing renewals.
  • They negotiate well.

Some RMs manage to achieve volume, add fees, cross-sell and minimize risk, without conceding on rate. Look closer, and you’ll find a common set of tactics and strategies.

Banks that understand what makes their top performers great can turn a best practice into a common practice.

A Better Way to Value Deposit-Driven Deals

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deposits-4-1-19.pngThere’s no doubt that the focus these days on acquisitions centers around deposits. When surveyed at the 2019 Acquire or Be Acquired conference, 71 percent of attendees said that a target’s deposit base was the most important factor in making the decision to acquire. This suggests that targets with excess liquidity (low loan-to-deposit ratios) will be highly valued in the market going forward.

This strategic objective is out of whack with traditional deal valuation metrics.

The two primary traditional deal metrics are tangible book value (TBV) payback period and earnings per share (EPS) accretion. Investors expect every deal to meet the benchmarks of a low TBV payback period (ideally less than three years) and be accretive to EPS, according to a presentation from Keefe Bruyette & Woods President and CEO Tom Michaud.

These are earnings-based metrics, and targets with low loan-to-deposit ratios have lower earnings because they have larger securities portfolios relative to loans. Therefore, traditional consolidation modeling will undervalue those targets with longer payback periods and lower accretion. Potential acquirers will struggle to justify competitive prices for these highly valued targets.

Why are deals that clearly create shareholder value by strengthening the buyer’s deposit base not reflected by the deal metrics du jour? Because those metrics are flawed. How can you justify a deposit-driven deal to an investor base that is focused on TBV payback and EPS accretion? By abandoning traditional valuation methods and using forward-looking, common sense analytics that capture the true value of an acquisition.

Traditional consolidation methodology projects the buyer and seller independently, then combines them with some purchase accounting and cost savings adjustments. Maybe the analyst will increase consolidated loan growth generated from the excess deposits acquired. This methodology does not capture the true value of the acquired deposits.

The intelligent acquirer should first project its own financials under realistic scenarios, given current market trends. Industry deposit growth has already begun to slow, and the big banks are taking more and more market share. If the bank were to grow loans organically, it must be determined:

  • How much of the funding would come from core deposits and how much would require brokered deposits or other borrowings like Federal Home Loan Bank advances and repurchase agreements? This change in funding mix will drive up incremental interest expense.
  • How many of the bank’s existing depositors will shift their funds from low cost checking and savings accounts to higher cost CDs to capture higher market rates? This process will increase the bank’s existing cost of funds.
  • What will happen to my deposit rates when my competitors start advertising higher rates in a desperate play to attract deposits? This will put more pressure on the bank’s existing cost of funds.
  • How many of my existing loans will reprice at higher rates and help overcome increasing funding costs? Invictus’ BankGenome™ intelligence system suggests that, while the average fixed/floating mix for all banks in the US is 60/40, the percentage of floating rate loans actually repricing at higher rates in the next 12 months is much lower because the weighted average time between loan reset dates is more than six quarters.

Standalone projections for the buyer must adequately reflect the risks inherent in the current operating environment. These risks will affect a bank’s bottom line and, therefore, shareholder value. This process will create a true baseline against which to measure the impact of the acquisition. Management must educate its investors on the flaws in legacy analytics, so they can understand a deal’s true value.

In the acquisition scenario, the bank is acquiring loan growth with existing core deposit funding attached. And if the target has excess deposits, the acquirer can deploy those funds into additional loans grown organically without the funding risks due to current market trends. The cost differential between the organic growth and acquisition scenarios creates real, tangible savings. These savings translate to higher incremental earnings from the acquisition, which alleviate TBV payback periods and EPS accretion issues. Traditional deal metrics may be used as guideposts in evaluating an acquisition, but a misguided reliance on them can obscure the true strategic and financial shareholder value created in a transaction.

Every target should be analyzed in depth, with prices customized to the acquirer’s unique balance sheet and footprint. Don’t pass on a great deal because of flawed traditional methodologies.

The Big Picture of Banking in Three Simple Charts

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banking-3-22-19.pngOne thing that separates great bankers from their peers is a deep appreciation for the highly cyclical nature of the banking industry.

Every industry is cyclical, of course, thanks to the cyclical nature of the economy. Good times are followed by bad times, which are followed by good times. It’s always been that way, and there’s no reason to think it will change anytime soon.

Yet, banking is different.

The typical bank borrows $10 for every $1 in equity. On one hand, this leverage accelerates the economic growth of the communities a bank serves. But on the other, it makes banks uniquely sensitive to fluctuations in employment and asset prices.

Even a modest correction in the business cycle or a major asset class can send dozens of banks into receivership.

“It is in the nature of an industry whose structure is competitive and whose conduct is driven by supply to have cycles that only end badly,” wrote Barbara Stewart in “How Will This Underwriting Cycle End?,” a widely cited paper published in 1980 on the history of underwriting cycles.

Stewart was referring to the insurance industry, but her point is equally true in banking.

This is why bankers with a big-picture perspective have an advantage over bankers without a similarly deep and broad appreciation for the history of banking, combined with knowledge about the strengths and infirmities innate in a bank’s business model.

How does one go about gaining a big-picture perspective?

You can do it the hard way, by amassing personal experience. If you’ve seen enough cycles, then you know, as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., has said: “You don’t run a business hoping you don’t have a recession.”

Or you can do it the easy way, by accruing experience by proxy—that is, by learning how things unfolded in the past. If you know that nine out of the last nine recessions were all precipitated by rising interest rates, for instance, then you’re likely to be more cautious with your loan portfolio in a rising rate environment.

You can see this in the chart below, sourced from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ popular FRED database. The graph traces the effective federal funds rate since 1954, with the vertical shaded portions representing recessions.

Fed-Funds-Rate.png

A second chart offering additional perspective on the cyclical nature of banking traces bank failures since the Civil War, when the modern American banking industry first took shape.

This might seem macabre—who wants to obsess over bank failures?—but this is an inseparable aspect of banking that is ignored at one’s peril. Good bankers respect and appreciate this, which is one reason their institutions avoid failure.

Failures.png

Not surprisingly, the incidence of bank failures closely tracks the business cycle. The big spike in the 1930s corresponds to the Great Depression. The spike in the 1980s and 1990s marks the savings and loan crisis. And the smaller recent surge corresponds to the financial crisis.

All told, a total of 17,365 banks have failed since 1865. A useful analog through which to think about banking, in other words, is that it’s a war of attrition, much like the conflict that spawned the modern American banking industry.

A third chart offering insight into how the banking industry has evolved in recent decades illustrates historical acquisition activity.

Acquisitions.png

Approximately 4 percent of banks consolidate on an annual basis, equating to about 200 a year nowadays. But this is an average. The actual number has fluctuated widely over time. Twitter_Logo_Blue.png

From 1940 through the mid-1970s, when interstate and branch banking were prohibited in most states, there were closer to 100 bank acquisitions a year. But then, as these regulatory barriers came down in the 1980s and 1990s, deal activity surged.

The point being, while banking is a rapidly consolidating industry, the most recent pace of consolidation has decelerated. This is relevant to anyone who may be thinking of buying or selling a bank. It’s also relevant to banks that aren’t in the market to do a deal, as customer attrition in the wake of a competitors’ sale has often been a source of organic growth.

In short, it’s easy to dismiss history as a topic of interest only to professors and armchair historians. But the experience one gains by proxy from looking to the past can help bankers better position their institutions for the present and the future.

Take it from investor Charlie Munger: “There’s no better teacher than history in determining the future.”

Grow Core Deposits Using Custom Rewards, Not Toasters

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deposit-12-20-19.pngOver the past three years, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates nine times and created an environment where banks can earn more on their lending portfolios, but also a heated battle to win deposits.

Compounding the issue is technology, which has made it easier than ever for customers to shop around for competitive rates and switch banks.

To grow and retain deposits, financial institutions need to be proactive in providing the rates and benefits customers want. But it can be a challenge to offer those benefits in a way that increases the quality and quantity of all-important core deposits.

Many banks have structured rewards programs so they reward a new product purchase or behavior, but they don’t incentivize long-term changes in customer interactions with the bank.

Institutions have long offered incentives such as hundreds of dollars of cash back for new account openings, or extravagant gifts for scheduling a recurring transfer of funds. However, these arrangements can often backfire. Once the customer receives their cash back, the newly opened account can languish unused and transaction-less indefinitely.

The expensive gadget the bank gave away doesn’t make financial sense against the $10 monthly transfer the customer automated from their checking account to their savings account.

Institutions like Leader Bank, a $1.4 billion asset bank based in Arlington, Massachusetts, and Opportunity Bank of Montana, a $700 million asset bank based in Helena, have solved this issue by incentivizing behaviors that build the habits of an ideal core customer. As for the rewards, they provide benefits that can be easily administered because they tie into the bank’s existing business model.

The types of behaviors that create habits for bank customers—and profitability for the bank—should be focused on the continuous utilization of bank products.

Here are some examples:

  • Use the bank’s debit card for 10 or more transactions a month. This moves the bank’s debit card to top-of-wallet and increases interchange fee income. 
  • Sign up for a sizeable monthly direct deposit. Banks can require a direct deposit of $800 or $1,500—whatever amount makes sense in their local market. This behavior ensures that the account earning rewards becomes the customer’s primary account. 
  • Sign up for e-statements. Even a simple behavior like opting into e-statements will save the bank money.

When all of the activities above are bundled together, these requirements for qualifying for rewards could transform a customer into a valuable core depositor.

In return for the customer meeting the bank’s qualifications, banks should go far to provide return value. One-time gifts and prizes are often not enough to drive consistent, ongoing customer behavior; the rewards must be ongoing as well.

Practical, local, ongoing benefits will help a community bank stand out and compete against mega-banks.

Consider these options:

  • Reimburse ATM fees. One of the primary benefits that a mega-bank has over the typical community bank is its national footprint. Banks of any size can offer ATM fee reimbursement as a reward. Not only does this expand the bank’s footprint by giving customers access to their cash from anywhere, it also reinforces the customer’s new habit to use their debit card more frequently. 
  • Offer cash back on debit card transactions. Cash back signals to customers that your bank is grateful to have their business and mirrors offers by major credit card companies. Whether your bank can offer 1 percent or 3 percent, your institution can likely find a sweet spot for this attractive incentive that makes financial sense.
  • Provide discounts with local merchants. Leader Bank partners with more than 20 local merchants who provide discounts to the bank’s rewards customers when they shop at their businesses. This type of reward can help the bank integrate deeper into the local community. 
  • Offer higher yielding rates on companion savings accounts for core customers, but only if and when they meet the criteria.

Given that rising interest rates are a major driver in the battle for deposits, rates on savings accounts may be a key component to driving customer acquisition. But your bank may not have to pay that higher rate out every month.

With a technology solution, banks can manage their rewards in such a way that, unless a customer meets all of the criteria for rewards in a given month, they don’t earn rewards that month either. This feature optimizes savings for the bank and ensures that customers continue to engage with the bank like a core customer.

By playing to their strengths and rewarding the right behaviors, banks can create custom rewards programs that both make sense with their business model and provide the kind of marquee benefits today’s consumers are seeking.

Should 1,900 Banks Restructure After Tax Reform?

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strategy-2-18-19.pngOne of the big story lines of 2018 was tax reform, which should put more money in the pockets of consumers and businesses to grow, hire, and borrow more from banks.

Shareholders of Subchapter-S banks may ask whether the benefits of Sub-S status are as meaningful in the new tax environment. Roughly 35 percent of the 5,400 banks in the U.S. are Subchapter-S corporations, and given the changes brought by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, some choices made under the prior tax regime should be revisited.

Prior to tax reform, the benefits of Sub-S status were apparent given the double taxation of C-Corp earnings with its corporate tax rate of 35 percent, plus the individual dividend tax rate of 20 percent. That’s compared to the S-Corp, which only carried the individual income tax rate up to 39.5 percent.

Tax reform lowered the C-Corp tax rate to 21 percent, lowered the maximum individual rate to 37 percent, and created a potential 20 percent deduction of S-Corp pass-through earnings, all of which make the choice much more complicated.

Add complexities about how to calculate the 20 percent pass-through deduction on S-Corp earnings, the 3.8 percent net investment income tax on C-Corp dividends and some S-Corp pass-through earnings, and it becomes more challenging to decide which is best.

Here are some broad concepts to consider:

  • S-Corp shareholders are taxed on the corporation’s earnings at the individual’s tax rate. If the corporation does not pay dividends to shareholders, the individual tax is being paid before the individual receives the actual distribution. 
  • The individual tax on S-Corp earnings may be mitigated by the 20 percent pass-through deduction allowed by the IRS, but not all the rules have been written yet. 
  • A C-Corp will pay the 21 percent corporate tax, but individual tax liability is deferred until shareholders are paid dividends. The longer the deferral, the more likely a C-Corp structure could be more tax efficient.

The impact of growth, acquisitions, distributions, and capitalization requirements are interrelated and critical in determining which entity makes the most sense.

If a bank is growing quickly and distributing a large percentage of its earnings, its retained earnings may not be sufficient to maintain required capital levels and may require outside capital, especially if the bank is considering growth through acquisition. Because an S-Corp is limited in the type and number of shareholders, its access to outside capital may also be limited, often to investments by management, board, friends, family and community members.

A bank with little or no growth may be able to fully distribute its earnings and still maintain required capital levels. Depending on the impact of Internal Revenue Code Section 199A, state taxes, the 3.8 percent net investment income tax and other factors, Subchapter S status may be more tax efficient.

Section 199A permits the deduction of up to 20 percent of qualifying trade or business income and can be critical to determining whether Subchapter-S makes sense. For shareholders with income below certain thresholds, the deduction is not controversial and can have a big impact.

For shareholders with income above the thresholds, the deduction could be limited or eliminated if the business income includes specified service trade or business income, which includes investment management fees and may include trust and fiduciary fees and other non-interest income items.

S-Corp structures can be terminated at any time. If your bank is a C-Corp and considering a Subchapter S election for the 2019 calendar tax year, the election is due on or before March 15, 2019.

Given the level of complexity and amount of change brought about by the new tax legislation, it is clear that that decisions made under the old rules should be revisited.

The Most Important Question in Banking Right Now

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banking-2-15-19.pngTo understand the seismic shifts underway in the banking industry today, it’s helpful to look back at what a different industry went through in the 1980s—the industry for computer memory chips.

The story of Intel Corp. through that period is particularly insightful.

Intel was founded in 1968.

Within four years, it emerged as one of the leading manufacturers of semiconductor memory chips in the world.

Then something changed.

Heightened competition from Japanese chip manufacturers dramatically shrank the profits Intel earned from producing memory chips.

The competition was so intense that Intel effectively abandoned its bread-and-butter memory chip business in favor of the relatively new field of microprocessors.

It’s like McDonald’s switching from hamburgers to tacos.

In the words of Intel’s CEO at the time, Andy Grove, the industry had reached a strategic inflection point.

“[A] strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change,” Grove later wrote his book, “Only the Paranoid Survive.”

“That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights,” Grove continued. “But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.”

The parallels to the banking industry today are obvious.

Over the past decade, as attention has been focused on the recovery from the financial crisis, there’s been a fundamental shift in the way banks operate.

To make a deposit a decade ago, a customer had to visit an ATM or walk into a branch. Nowadays, three quarters of deposit transactions at Bank of America, one of the biggest retail banks in the country, are completed digitally.

The implications of this are huge.

Convenience and service quality are no longer defined by the number and location of branches. Now, they’re a function of the design and functionality of a bank’s website and mobile app.

This shift is reflected in J.D. Power’s 2019 Retail Banking Advice Study, a survey of customer satisfaction with advice and account-opening processes at regional and national banks.

Overall customer satisfaction with advice provided by banks increased in the survey compared to the prior year. Yet, advice delivered digitally (via website or mobile app) had the largest satisfaction point gain over the prior year, with the most profound improvement among consumers under 40 years old.

It’s this change in customers’ definition of convenience and service quality that has enabled the biggest banks over the past few years to begin growing deposits organically, as opposed to through acquisitions, for the first time since the consolidation cycle began in earnest nearly four decades ago.

And as we discussed in our latest issue of Bank Director magazine, the new definition of convenience has also altered the growth strategy of these same big banks.

If they want to expand into a new geographic market today, they don’t do so by buying a bunch of branches. They do so, instead, by opening up a few de novo locations and then supplementing those branches with aggressive marketing campaigns tied to their digital banking offerings.

It’s a massive shift. But is it a strategic inflection point along the same lines as that faced by Intel in the 1980s?

Put another way, has the debut and adoption of digital banking changed the fundamental competitive dynamics of banking? Or is digital banking just another distribution channel, along the lines of phone banking, drive-through windows or ATMs?

There’s no way to know for sure, says Don MacDonald, the former chief marketing officer of Intel, who currently holds the same position at MX, a fintech company helping banks, credit unions, and developers better leverage their customer data.

In MacDonald’s estimation, true strategic inflection points are caused by changes on multiple fronts.

In the banking industry, for instance, the fronts would include regulation, technology, customer expectations and competition.

Viewed through this lens, it seems reasonable to think that banking has indeed passed such a threshold.

On the regulatory front, for the first time ever, a handful of banks don’t have a choice but to focus on organic deposit growth—once the exclusive province of community and regional banks—as the three largest retail banks each hold more than 10 percent of domestic deposits and are thus prohibited from growing through acquisition.

Furthermore, regulators are making it easier for firms outside the industry—namely, fintechs—to compete directly against banks, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s fintech charter being the most obvious example.

Technology has changed, too, with customers now using their computers and smartphones to complete deposits and apply for mortgages, negating the need to walk into a branch.

And customer expectations have been radically transformed, as evidenced by the latest J.D. Power survey revealing a preference toward digital banking advice over personal advice.

To be clear, whether a true strategic inflection point is here or not doesn’t absolve banks of their traditional duty to make good loans and provide excellent customer service. But it does mean the rules of the game have changed.

Exclusive: An Interview with Brian Moynihan

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bank-of-america-2-14-19.pngBank Director’s writers and editors talk with the best bankers in the United States to inform the stories we publish on BankDirector.com and in Bank Director magazine. But these conversations often go deeper and extend beyond the subject matter of those stories, leaving a lot of immensely valuable information on the cutting room floor, so to speak.

With this in mind, we are making available—exclusively to our members—the unabridged transcripts of these conversations. It is our belief that the insights found within them can help bankers gain knowledge and improve their own institutions.

For the cover story in the fourth quarter 2018 issue of Bank Director magazine, Executive Editor John Maxfield interviewed Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America Corp., at the bank’s New York City offices.

While the story focused on how Moynihan, who has led Bank of America since 2010, transformed the bank’s culture and performance, the conversation also delved into his views on growth, risk management and other topics of interest to bank leaders.

In this lengthy interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity, Moynihan shares:

  • The sources of his philosophy on banking
  • The principles that inform Bank of America’s revamped growth philosophy
  • How history informs his view of the future
  • Lessons learned from the financial crisis
  • How Bank of America deepens relationships with existing customers
  • Why operating leverage helps the bank better manage risk

Larry De Rita, Bank of America’s senior vice president of corporate communications, is also quoted in the transcript.

download.png Download transcript for the full exclusive interview

How Open Banking Changes the Game for Private Banks

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technology-2-4-19.pngOpen banking is the most prominent response to the strong push from technology, competition, regulation and customer expectations. This begs the questions, why should a private bank’s open banking strategy be individual? What impact does it have on the IT architecture? How does it improve customer service?

The new “ex-custody 2.0” model provides the answers.

Regulation, competition from digital giants, changing client expectations, the rise of open API technology and next generation scalable infrastructure are the forces unbundling the financial industry’s business model. Open banking, or the shift from a monolithic to a distributed business model, is one strategy for banks to harness these forces and generate value.

Four strategies for private banks
While banks have traditionally played the role of an integrator, offering products to clients through their own channels and IT infrastructure, open banking provides them with more possibilities.

These include being a producer, or offering products through an application programming interface (API) as white-label to other institutions; a distributor that combines innovative products from third-party providers on their platform; or a platform provider that brings third-party products and third-party clients together.

Private banks may adopt a mix of these roles.

Two Areas of Products
The products generated through open banking can be separated into two areas. The first area includes the API data from regulatory requirements such as PSD2 in Europe. These products are dependent on payment account information as well as payment executions over the mandated APIs.

The second area of products is part of the open banking movement and use of APIs in general. The scope of potential products is much wider as they depend on more than just payment account data or payment execution. Many trend products like crowdfunding, event-driven insurance, financial data economy or comparison services are shaped by the open banking movement.

In practice, many products depend on regulatory APIs, but also on data from other sources. This has been developed into a multi-banking product dubbed “ex-custody 2.0.”

Multi-banking – The ex-custody 2.0 model shows how a client’s wealth can look if his bank can aggregate account information and other data. Technology like the automated processing of client statements or enhanced screen scraping allows, upon client consent, to gather and aggregate investment or lending data as well. The client’s full wealth can then be displayed in one place. From the bank’s perspective, what better place can there be than its own online portal? Terms like multi-banking, account aggregation and holistic wealth management have been coined by the market. We want to add another term to those existing ones:

“Ex-custody 2.0.” Ex-custody is not a new term in the industry. It refers to positions of an accounting area not banked by the bank itself, but where the bank takes over administrative custody and reporting tasks for the principal bank. Ex-custody 2.0 for multi-banking is the next step, where the principal bank does not need to compensate the custodian bank for any services. In the case of screen-scraping, it does not necessarily know the other bank.

Contrary to other multi-banking or account aggregation implementations, the ex-custody 2.0 model is not a standalone application or dashboard, but fully integrated into the bank’s core technology and online banking system. Data is sourced from fintech aggregators through APIs and batch files.

Positions are then booked in a separate accounting area before being fed to the online banking system. This allows the bank to offer innovative products to the customer that rely on integration with both a booking and an online system.

New products include:

  • Multi-banking: the service to manage one’s wealth on one portal
  • Automated advice suitability based on all connected positions on the platform
  • Dynamic Lombard lending based on bank and external investments
  • Cross-selling via direct saving suggestions
  • Risk profiling and portfolio monitoring across institutions and borders
  • Balance sweeping across the family wealth or managed trusts and businesses
  • What-if and scenario simulation through big data modules on the platform.

Conclusion
Open banking will change the business model of private banks. It is a great opportunity, but also a great threat to existing business. The opportunities consist mainly of new scalability options for products, new integration possibilities for third-party products and the creation of new products using the data from open banking.

The main threat is the loss of the direct relationship between banks and clients. However, there is no mix of the four strategies that fits every bank’s business model. It is vital for a private bank to define a position according to the four strategies discussed here and to do so in an individual, conscious manner.

How History’s Playbook Can Help You Grow Today

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leadership-1-30-19.pngOne might assume that many attendees at Bank Director’s Acquire or Be Acquired Conference in Arizona left town with an M&A game plan focused solely on their next acquisition, but a legendary banker suggested a different strategy.

John B. McCoy, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Banc One Corp., recommended during a presentation on the final day of the conference that bankers consider a strategy his father used that ended up revolutionizing banking.

This year’s conference, which celebrated its 25th anniversary, was held at the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge resort in Phoenix.

McCoy’s advice is a page taken directly from the playbook of his father, John G. McCoy, who founded Bank One and turned it into a regional powerhouse before it was eventually acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2004.

“One of the things he did, which I suggest for all of you, is he set aside that first year 4 percent of the profits, (which) went to (research and development) to do new things, not fix old problems,” McCoy said.

The advice is especially prescient today because the banking industry is being pressured to keep pace with an evolving digital economy and changing customer preferences for how they bank, especially in the retail sector.

Bank One spent that money building an exceptional retail franchise. It was the first bank to place ATMs in every branch, add drive-thru lanes at its branches, offer a Bank of America credit card and essentially invent the country’s first debit card.

“That set us off,” McCoy said. “One took us to the next.”

That investment strategy played an important role in its growth: Bank One’s assets grew from $140 million in 1958—when it was the smallest of three banks in Columbus, Ohio—to more than $8 billion 25 years later, eventually becoming the sixth-largest bank in the country.

Early in its history, Bank One pursued an ambitious M&A strategy where it bought dozens of small banks—first in Ohio and later in surrounding states—using a concept that it called the “Uncommon Partnership,” where it would leave the management team of the acquired bank in place while centralizing many of its back office functions to save money. In fact, McCoy said they would only acquire a bank if the CEO agreed to stay in place.

Bank One also limited the risks of its acquisition program by never buying a bank that was more than 20 percent of its own asset size.

An announcement on Monday that Detroit-based Chemical Financial Corp. was acquiring Minneapolis-based TCF Financial in a $3.6 billion deal, creating the country’s 27th largest bank with $45 billion in assets, also generated a lot of talk during the conference. Chemical and TCF billed the transaction as a merger of equals even though Chemical’s shareholders will own 54 percent of the merged company.

While some some conference presenters suggested that mergers of equals could occur with more frequency given the recent declines in bank valuations, which has made it more difficult for acquirers to pay a big takeover premium, others were more skeptical.

Tom Brown, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Second Curve Capital, which invests exclusively in banks and other financial companies, doubted that those deals will become regular. For one thing, there are significant social issues to resolve, like which CEO will end up running the company, how many directors from the two banks will constitute the new board and what will the new company’s name be. (In the TCF/Chemical deal, the new company’s headquarters will be in Chemical’s hometown of Detroit, but it will take the TCF name.)

“They’re just really tough to do,” Brown said during the conference’s closing session. “Someone who has been a CEO is not going to take a different role. And, while they all make great sense to me as an investor, the amount of work before the deal could even be agreed upon is just too challenging.”

Several speakers at the conference also said that smaller banks will need to gain scale to compete in a consolidating industry. Conventional wisdom says that scale helps improve efficiency, reduces costs and boosts profitability–but the urge to grow bigger purely for the scale must be tempered, Brown said.

“I talk to all sorts of CEO’s who are $250 billion assets and they still think they don’t have scale,” Brown said. “Let’s just stop using the get bigger to get scale idea because I haven’t seen that work yet.”