Why It’s Not Too Late for Interest Rate Swaps

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“Has the train left the station? Are we trying to bolt the door after the horse has left the stable?”

These are the types of questions community bank directors are asking in the aftermath of the largest single-year interest rate increase since 1980. Playing catch-up in its fight to control inflation, the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes in 2022 were both unexpected and larger than any previous decades. One year later, some industry observers have begun to argue that an overly aggressive Fed may soon need to reverse course to prevent a recession. If the worst is truly behind us, this line of argument goes, why should a bank executive invest time in 2023 to install interest rate hedging capabilities?

Because, we argue, there will always be uncertainty regarding the direction and speed of change in interest rates. Swaps give institutions enormous power because they have the ability to exchange that uncertainty (floating rate) for certainty (fixed rate).

Here are three strategies we think banks with direct access to interest rate derivatives will deploy in 2023. These ideas are timeless but are particularly relevant based on where we are today in the economic cycle:

1. Individual Loans
A borrower hedging program enables a bank to retain a floating-rate asset while the borrower secures fixed-rate financing via a swap. With on-balance sheet loan rates jumping from the mid-3% range to as high as 6% to 7%, booking the fixed-rate loan seems like the best thing to do. But weak or negotiable prepayment language often means that a fixed-rate loan really behaves like a one-way floater. For example, a loan booked at 6.5% today will never move higher — but if the market corrects lower, you can expect a call from the borrower looking for a downward rate adjustment.

Some banks without access to hedging tools have placed their borrowers into loan-level interest rate swaps by involving an outside party in the loan agreement. These indirect swaps are designed as a convenience product for small banks to get their toe in the water and accommodate larger borrowers with a long-term fixed rate. By keeping the community bank swap-free, indirect programs also prevent the bank from considering the following two balance sheet strategies that protect and enhance net interest margin.

2. Securities Portfolio
Perhaps the greatest pain point related to interest rates that banks experience in 2022 was marking the securities portfolio to market prices and booking the resulting unrealized losses in the accumulated other comprehensive income, or AOCI, account. Banks without swaps installed were forced to choose between two bad options during the excess liquidity surge of 2020: hold onto cash that earned virtually nothing or purchase low-yielding long-term bonds to pick up maybe 100 basis points. Institutions with access to swaps had a third choice: keep the first two years of the higher-yielding asset and then swap the final eight years to a floating rate. Swaps used to fine-tune the duration of a bond provide the double benefit of converting to a higher floating yield today (handy when the fed funds is around 4.33%) and creating a gain in the AOCI account to offset the losses booked on the bond.

While a swap today cannot erase past unrealized losses, it is a game changer for the CFO and treasurer to have the ability to take control of portfolio duration.

3. Wholesale Funding
Higher interest rates have also led depositors to move their funds, leading banks to grow their wholesale funding from sources such as FHLB advances. Banks without access to swaps will often ladder out term fixed-rate advances to longer maturity dates, using a product that includes both a yield curve premium and a liquidity premium. A bank with hedging capabilities can accomplish the same objective by keeping the actual funding position short and floating. From there, the funding manager can conserve the liquidity premium and achieve a more efficient all-in borrowing cost by using pay-fixed swaps to create the ladder. Additionally, the swap always provides a two-way make-whole, where a traditional fixed-advance includes a down-rate penalty but no benefit when rates rise.

While some bankers still view interest rate derivatives as risky, the rapidly changing conditions experienced in 2022 suggest that the greater risk may be attempting to manage the balance sheet without access to these powerful tools. Today, more than 40 years since their creation, one thing is certain: it’s not too late for any bank to start using interest rate derivatives.

Deposit Costs Creep Up Following Rate Increases

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The rapidly rising interest rate environment is beginning to impact the funding dynamics at banks as deposit competition increases and they pay up for time deposits.

While rising rates are generally good for lending, the unrelenting climb in interest rates hasn’t been uniformly positive for banks. Since the pandemic, many banks have had historic deposit growth and liquidity. The aggressive and continuous rising interest rate environment could change that. 

There was a 1.1% drop in total deposits at all Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-chartered banks in the third quarter, according to a November report from analysts at Janney Montgomery Scott. Excluding time deposits like certificates of deposits, or CDs, core deposits dropped 2%. But over that time, 40% of banks reported positive deposit growth in excess of 1%. That could mean that as core deposits leave banks, they are growing time deposits. 

The median cost of deposits for banks in the Kroll Bond Rating Agency universe more than doubled in the third quarter to 37 basis points. 

“No longer content with letting the hot money exit, this sharp increase in deposit costs is the product of a strategy of rate increases designed to stem outflows of less sticky or rate sensitive deposits,” wrote KBRA in a Nov. 15 report.  

One reason for this deposit shift is consumers and businesses are leveraging technology to move their funds into higher rate accounts. Core deposit outflows in future quarters could be unpredictable for institutions: they might happen at a faster pace or higher volume than a bank is prepared for, or a few large, important deposit relationships may leave. This could deplete available cash on hand that an institution would use for ongoing operations or to fund new loan opportunities. 

“The last time we went through a significantly rising rate environment, in the 1970s, money market funds did not exist. People were captive to the bank,” says Nate Tobik, CEO of CompleteBankData and author of “The Bank Investor’s Handbook.” “Now we’re [repeating] the ‘70s, except there are alternatives.”

One option banks had in the past to raise short-term liquidity — selling securities marked as available for sale (AFS) — may be off the table for the time being. The bank space carried a total unrealized loss, mostly tied to bonds, of more than $450 billion in the second quarter, according to the FDIC. This loss is recorded outside of net income, in a call report line item called accumulated other comprehensive income. Selling AFS securities right now would mean the bank needs to record the loss. 

“Over the past couple weeks, we have had multiple discussions with community bankers that have been very focused on deposit generation,” wrote attorney Jeffrey Gerrish, of Gerrish Smith Tuck, in a late October client newsletter. “Unfortunately, many of these community banks have a securities portfolio that is so far under water they really don’t see the ability to sell any securities to generate cash because they cannot afford to take the loss. This is a very common scenario and will result in a pretty healthy competition for deposits over the next 12 to 24 months.”

In response, banks will need to consider other options to raise alternative funds fast. Noncore funding can include brokered CDs, wholesale funding or advances from the Federal Home Loan Banks system. Tobik says CDs appeal to banks because they are relatively easy to raise and are “time deterministic” — the funding is locked for the duration of the certificate. 

All of those products come at a higher rate that could erode the bank’s profit margin. 

Another ratio to watch at this time is the liquidity ratio, wrote Janney analysts in a Nov. 21 report. The liquidity ratio, which compares liquid assets to total liabilities, is used by examiners as a more “holistic” alternative to ratios like loans-to-deposits. The median liquidity ratio for all publicly traded banks at the end of the third quarter was 20%, with most banks falling in a distribution curve ranging from 10% to 25%.

The 20% median is still 4% higher than the median ratio in the fourth quarter of 2019. The effective federal funds rate got as high as 2.4% in summer 2019, compared to 3.08% in October. Janney did find that banks between $1 billion and $10 billion had “relatively lower levels” of liquidity compared to their smaller and bigger peers.

But for now, they see little to worry about, but a lot to keep their eyes on. “Our analysis shows that while liquidity has tightened slightly by several measures since a [fourth quarter 2021] peak, banks still maintain much higher levels of liquidity than prior to the pandemic and have plenty of capacity to take on additional wholesale funding as needed to supplement their core funding bases,” they wrote.

Going forward, banks will need to balance the tension between managing their liquidity profile and keeping their cost of funds low. What is the line between excess liquidity and adequate liquidity? How many deposit relationships need to leave any given bank before it starts a liquidity crunch? What is cost of paying more for existing deposits, versus the potential cost of bringing in wholesale or brokered deposits? 

The answers will be different for every bank, but every bank needs to have these answers.

The Return of the Credit Cycle

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It has been like waiting for the second shoe to fall.

The first shoe was the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the U.S. economy into lockdown mode in March 2020. Many banks prepared for an expected credit apocalypse by setting up big reserves for future loan losses — and those anticipated losses were the second shoe. Sure enough, the economy shrank 31.4% in the second quarter of 2020 as the lockdown took hold, but the expected loan losses never materialized. The economy quickly rebounded the following quarter – growing an astonishing 38% — and the feared economic apocalypse never occurred.

In fact, two and a half years later, that second shoe still hasn’t dropped. To this day, the industry’s credit performance since the beginning of the pandemic has been uncommonly good. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, net charge-offs (which is the difference between gross charge-offs and any subsequent recoveries) for the entire industry were an average of 23 basis points for 2021. Through the first six months of 2022, net charge-offs were just 10 basis points.

Surprisingly, the industry’s credit quality has remained strong even though U.S. economic growth was slightly negative in the first and second quarters of 2022. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which tracks changes in the country’s gross domestic product, had yet to release a preliminary third quarter number when this article published. However, using its own proprietary model, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimated in early October that U.S. GDP in the third quarter would come in at 2.9%.

This would suggest that the industry’s strong credit performance will continue for the foreseeable future. But an increasing number of economists are anticipating that the U.S. economy will enter a recession in 2023 as a series of aggressive rate increases this year by the Federal Reserve to lower inflation will eventually lead to an economic downturn. And this could render a significant change in the industry’s credit outlook, leading to what many analysts refer to as a “normalization of credit.”

So why has bank loan quality remained so good for so long, despite a bumpy economy in 2022? And when it finally comes, what would the normalization of credit look like?

Answering the first question is easy. The federal government responded to the pandemic with two major stimulus programs – the $2.2 trillion CARES Act during President Donald Trump’s administration, which included the Paycheck Protection Program, and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act during President Joe Biden’s administration — both which pumped a massive amount of liquidity into the U.S. economy.

At the same time, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee cut the federal funds rate from 1.58% in February 2020 to 0.05% in April, and also launched its quantitative easing policy, which injected even more liquidity into the economy through an enormous bond buying program. Combined, these measures left both households and businesses in excellent shape when the U.S. economy rebounded strongly in the third quarter of 2020.

“You had on one hand, just a spectacularly strong policy response that flooded the economy with money,” says R. Scott Siefers, a managing director and senior research analyst at the investment bank Piper Sandler & Co. “But No. 2, the economy really evolved very quickly on its own, such that businesses and individuals were able to adapt and change to circumstances [with the pandemic] very quickly. When you combine those two factors together, not only did we not see the kind of losses that one might expect when you take the economy offline for some period of time, we actually created these massive cushions of savings and liquidity for both individuals and businesses.”

The second question — what would a normalized credit environment look like? — is harder to answer. Ebrahim Poonawala, who heads up North American bank research at Bank of America Securities, says the bank’s economists are forecasting that the U.S. economy will enter a relatively mild recession in 2023 from the cumulative effects of four rate increases by the Federal Reserve — including three successive hikes of 75 basis points each, bringing the target rate in September to 3.25%. The federal funds rate could hit 4.4% by year-end if inflation remains high, and 4.6% by the end of 2023, based on internal projections by the Federal Reserve.

“There’s obviously a lot of debate around the [likelihood of a] recession today, but generally our view is that we will gradually start seeing [a] normalization and higher credit losses next year, even if it were not for an outright recession,” Poonawala says. While a normalized loss rate would vary from bank to bank depending on the composition of its loan portfolio, Poonawala says a reasonable expectation for the industry’s annualized net charge-off rate would be somewhere between 40 and 50 basis points.

That would be in line with the six-year period from 2014 through 2020, when annual net charge-offs for the industry never rose above 49 basis points. And while loan quality has been exceptional coming out of the pandemic, that six-year stretch was also remarkably good — and remarkably stable. And it’s no coincidence that it coincides with a period when interest rates were at historically low levels. For example, the federal funds rate in January 2014 was just 7 basis points, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ FRED online database. The rate would eventually peak at 2.4% in July 2019 before dropping back to 1.55% in December of that year when the Federal Reserve began cutting rates to juice a sagging economy. And yet by historical standards, a federal funds rate of even 2.4% is low.

Did this sustained low interest rate environment help keep loan losses low during that six-year run? Siefers believes so. “I don’t think there’s any question that cheap borrowing costs were, and have been, a major factor,” he says.

If interest rates do approach 4.6% in 2023 — which would raise the debt service costs for many commercial borrowers — and if the economy does tip into a mild recession, the industry’s loan losses could well exceed the recent high point of 49 basis points.

“There is a case to be made that a recession could look a bit more like the 2001-02 [downturn] in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble [bursting],” says Poonawala. “You saw losses, but it was an earnings hit for the banks. It wasn’t a capital event.”

That recession lasted just eight months and the decline in GDP from peak to trough was just 0.3%, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The industry’s net charge-off ratio rose to an average of 107 basis points in 2002 before dropping to 86 basis points in 2003, 59 basis points in 2004 and bottoming out at 39 basis points in 2006.

This same cyclical pattern repeated itself in 2008 — the first year of the financial crisis – when the average net charge-off rate was 1.30%. The rate would peak at 2.67% in 2010 before declining to 68 basis points in 2013 as the economy gradually recovered.

When we talk about the normalization of credit, what we’re really talking about is the return of the normal credit cycle, where loan losses rise and fall with the cyclical contraction and expansion of the economy. Banks have experienced something akin to a credit nirvana since 2014, but it looks like the credit cycle will reappear in 2023 — aided and abetted by higher interest rates and an economic downturn.

Strengthening Financial Performance in a Rising Rate Environment

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Interest rate volatility has been a dominant theme this year and inflation worries have begun morphing into recession fears.

For banks, rising rates are generally a positive trend; they tend to result in higher deposit franchise values and higher net interest margins. While unrealized losses in the available for sale bond portfolio also typically increase during rising rate environments, adhering to a disciplined investment framework can help bank leaders avoid knee-jerk reactions and put unrealized losses into the right context (discussed previously here).

As rates continue to rise, it’s time to check the pulse on your institution’s pricing model. In addition to pricing assets accurately, a successful bank also focuses on funding cheaply, using a number of models to identify relative value and hedging interest rate risk when necessary. Here, we’ll dive deeper into three principles that can help institutions strengthen their financial performance.

Principle 1: Disciplined Asset Pricing
Capital requirements mean that a bank has a finite capacity to add assets to its balance sheet. Each asset going on the balance sheet must be critically evaluated to ensure it meets your institution’s specific performance goals and risk mandates.

Using a risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC) framework for asset pricing and relative value assessment helps establish a consistent, sustainable decision-making framework for capital allocation. Clearly, different assets have different risks and returns. An effective financial manager ensures that the bank is meeting its hurdle rates, or return on capital, and that the model and assumptions are as accurate as possible.

A mispriced asset isn’t just a risk to margin. It also represents liquidation risk, as assets priced incorrectly to market perceptions of risk have a higher likelihood of poor sale performance, such as losses on sale or failure to sell. The value of the institution can also be impacted if the bank consistently — even marginally — misprices assets. Overall, if an asset is not appropriately priced for the risks and costs associated with it, then a bank should critically evaluate its role on the balance sheet.

Principle 2: The Value of Deposit Funding
Banks benefit from low-cost, sticky funding. Core deposits typically comprise the largest and cheapest funding source, followed by term and wholesale funding and all other, generally short-term, funding sources.

Understanding your funding’s beta is a key first step to unlocking better financial performance.

In this application, beta is a measurement of the relationship between a funding source’s interest rate and an observable market rate; it is the sensitivity of funding cost relative to a change in interest rates.

As rates rise, low beta funding results in greater growth in franchise value compared to high beta funding. As assets reprice to the higher rate environment, balance sheets with low beta funding will see margins steadily widen. Banks with high beta funding tend to exhibit margin compression and declining valuations. Conversely, low beta funding results in more stable valuation as rates rise.

Principle 3: Risk Management in an ALM and RAROC Framework
Borrowers and depositors maximize their own utility, which often presents a dilemma for the financial institutions that serve them. When interest rates are low, borrowers typically want long-term, fixed-rate loans and depositors keep their deposits shorter term.  When interest rates are higher, we typically see the opposite behavior: depositors begin to consider term deposits and borrowers demand more floating rate loans. This dynamic can cause mismatches in asset and liability duration, resulting in interest rate risk exposure. Banks must regularly measure and monitor their risk exposure, especially when rates are on the move.

Significant divergence from neutral rate risk — a closely aligned repricing profile of a bank’s assets and liabilities — exposes a bank’s return on equity and valuation to potential volatility and underperformance when rates move. That’s where hedging comes in. Hedging can assist a bank by reducing asset-liability mismatches, enhancing its competitiveness by locking in spread through disciplined asset pricing and stabilizing financial performance. After all, banks are in the business of lending and safekeeping funds, but must take on risk to generate return. Hedging can reduce discomfort with a bank’s existing or projected balance sheet risks and improve balance sheet strategy agility to better meet customers’ needs.

There are opportunities for banks all along the yield curve. But institutions that don’t hedge compete for assets in the crowded short duration space — often with significant opportunity costs.

Rising rates generally result in stronger margins and valuations for well-funded depositories; disciplined asset pricing in a risk-adjusted framework is critical for financial performance. As a financial professional, it’s important that the board has a firm understanding of what drives deposit franchise value. Take the time to ensure that the entire leadership team understands potential risk in your bank’s ALM composition and be prepared to hedge, if needed.

How High Inflation, High Rates Will Impact Banking

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In the latest episode of The Slant Podcast, former Comptroller of the Currency Gene Ludwig believes the combination of high inflation and rising interest rates present unique risks to the banking industry. Ludwig expects that higher interest rates will lead to more expensive borrowing for many businesses while also increasing their operating costs. This could ultimately result in “real credit risk problems that we haven’t seen for some time.”

While the banking industry is well capitalized and asset quality levels are still high, Ludwig says the combination of high inflation and rising interest rates will be a challenge for younger bankers who have never experienced an environment like this before.

Ludwig knows a lot about banking, but his journey after leaving the Comptroller of the Currency’s office has been an interesting one. After completing his five-year term as comptroller in 1998, Ludwig could have returned to his old law firm of Covington & Burling LLP and resumed his legal practice. Looking back on it, he says he was motivated by two things. One was to put “food on the table” for his family because he left the comptroller’s office “with negative net worth – [and] it was negative by a lot.”

His other motivation was to find ways of fixing people’s problems from a broader perspective than the law sometimes allows. “I love the practice of law,’’ he says. “It’s intellectually satisfying.” But from his perspective, the law is just one way to solve a problem. Ludwig says he was looking for a way to “solve problems more broadly and bring in lawyers when they’re needed.” This led to a prolonged burst of entrepreneurial activity in which Ludwig established several firms in the financial services space. His best known venture is probably the Promontory Financial Group, a regulatory consulting firm that he eventually sold to IBM.

Ludwig’s most recent initiative is the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, which he started in 2019. Ludwig believes the American dream has vanished for many median- and low-income families, and the institute has developed a new metric which makes a more accurate assessment of how inflation is hurting those families than traditional measurements such as the Consumer Price Index — which he says drastically understates the impact.

Ludwig hopes the Institute’s work gives policymakers in Washington, D.C., a clearer sense of how desperate the situation is for millions of American families and leads to positive action.

This episode, and all past episodes of The Slant Podcast, are available on Bank Director, Spotify and Apple Music.

Tips for Banks to Navigate Top Risks in 2022

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Banks continue to meet unprecedented challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical cyberthreats and increasing public awareness of environment, social and governance (ESG) issues.

With the current landscape posing ever-evolving risks for banks, Moss Adams collaborated with Bank Director to conduct the 2022 Risk Survey and explore what areas are front of mind for bank industry leaders. Top insights from Bank Director’s 2022 Risk Survey include that the vast majority of survey respondents reported that cybersecurity and interest rate risks pose increasing concerns, and they expect these challenges to persist in the second half of the year, due to turbulent economic and geopolitical conditions. The survey also identified that banks increasingly focus on issues related to compliance and regulatory risks.

Cybersecurity Oversight
Concerns about cybersecurity topped the survey responses: 93% of respondents stated that a need for increased cybersecurity grew significantly or somewhat. Bank executives and board members submitted survey responses in January, prior to heightened federal government warnings of increased Russian cyberattacks. Banks’ concerns will likely continue to increase as a result.

Data Breach Rates and Precautions
While only 5% of respondents reported experiencing a data breach or ransomware attack at their own institution in the years 2020 and 2021, 65% reported data breaches at their bank’s vendors. In response, 60% stated they updated their institution’s third-party vendor management policies, processes, or risk oversight.

As a critical U.S. industry, banks follow stringent regulatory requirements for data security. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) cybersecurity assessment tool provides a maturity model for banks to assess their cybersecurity maturity as baseline, evolving, intermediate, advanced or innovative. Ninety percent of respondents completed a cybersecurity assessment over the past 12 months; 61% used the FFIEC’s tool in combination with other methodologies, and another 19% only used the FFIEC’s tool. And 83% of respondents said that the maturity of their bank’s cybersecurity program increased in 2021, compared to previous assessments.

Room for Improvement
Banks noted several areas of improvement for their cybersecurity programs, including training for bank staff (83%), technology to better detect and deter cyberthreats and intrusions (64%) and internal controls (43%). Thirty-nine percent believe they need to better attract and retain quality cybersecurity personnel. Banks’ investments in cybersecurity programs remained flat compared to the 2021 survey, with a median budget of $200,000.

As cybersecurity risks increase, banks should focus on researching and making appropriate investments, as well as implementing comprehensive planning for staff training, technology and governance. At the board level, respondents noted several activities as part of that body’s oversight of the cybersecurity risk management program. Key among these is board-level training (79%), ensuring continual improvements by management of their cybersecurity programs (75%) and being aware of any deficiencies in the bank’s cybersecurity program (71%).

Interest Rate Risk Concerns
The prospect of rising interest rates fueled anxiety for our respondents: 71% noted increased concern. As the Federal Open Market Committee combats higher inflation by hiking interest rates, 74% reported hoping that they wouldn’t raise rates by more than one percentage point by the end of 2022 — which is currently below what’s projected.

Faced with likely rate hikes, banks are looking to their own business models to navigate a potential decrease in overall lending volume and potential pressure on profit margins. Respondents also noted that they were increased their focus in sectors such as commercial and industrial, commercial real estate and construction, or with the Small Business Administration or obtaining other small business loans.

ESG Initiatives
Banks are under increasing pressure to adopt ESG initiatives. More than half of respondents don’t yet focus on ESG issues in a comprehensive manner, and regulators have yet to impose ESG requirements for banks. However, more than half of survey respondents say they have set goals and objectives in a variety of ESG-related areas, primarily in the social and governance verticals — employee development and community needs in particular topped the list.

Only 6% said that investors or other company stakeholders currently look for more disclosure around ESG initiatives, with diversity, equity and inclusion topping the list at 88%. Banks that haven’t established ESG strategies could first identify their top priority areas. These priorities may vary for each organization and will need to consider the values of investors, customers and local community.

Navigating the Turbulence of Rising Rates, Inflation and Volatility

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Financial markets have been rocked by significant volatility in 2022.

Over the first six months of 2022, the 10-year U.S. Treasury rate jumped from 1.52% to 3.2%. A confluence of events is driving that volatility: increased inflation expectations led to more significant and sooner-than-expected increases in the Federal Funds rate, uncertainty of the first military conflict in Europe since World War II, and the economy. Financial institutions are finding themselves in very turbulent waters.

Banks that prepared for this possibility are navigating across these choppy waters with greater ease. They’re using prudent risk management tools, like interest rate swaps, to smooth earnings and protect against continued increases in long-term rates. Swaps create more flexibility for banks: they can be quickly and easily implemented and allow institutions to bifurcate the rate risk from traditional assets and liabilities.

Most banks use hedging strategies that aim to smooth earnings. For example, banks use an interest rate swap to convert a portion of their floating-rate assets to fixed. They lock in the market’s expectations for rates and bring forward future expected income.

The benefits of this strategy:

  • Synthetically converting pools of floating-rate assets via a swap extends the duration of assets, reduces asset sensitivity and increases current earnings.
  • This helps banks monetize the shape of the yield curve by bringing forward future interest income and producing smoother net income.

When it comes to hedging floating rate loans, we see a mix of Fed Funds (to hedge loans tied to Prime), SOFR, LIBOR, and a handful of banks using that Bloomberg Short-Term Bank Yield (BSBY) index.  Additionally, hedging floating rate loans with floors requires special considerations.

On the other side of the spectrum, those banks hedging for rising rates primarily use swap and cap strategies to reduce duration risk in the loan and bond portfolio. Notably, the Financial Accounting Standards Board recently introduced the portfolio layer method, which allows banks to swap pools of fixed-rate assets like loans or securities to floating.

The benefits of this strategy:

  • Synthetically converting fixed-rate assets via a swap shortens the duration of a bank’s balance sheet and hedges rising rates.
  • Create more capacity for a bank to do more fixed-rate lending.
  • Swaps can start today or in the future, allowing banks to customize the risk mitigation to its risk profile.

In the turbulent seas of this current moment, banks prepared to use hedging strategies enjoy the benefits of smoother income and mitigated rate volatility. They also benefit from their flexibility: Banks can quickly execute swaps, allowing it to bifurcate the rate risk from traditional assets and liabilities. Finally, derivatives have low capital requirements, resulting in minimal impact to capital ratios.

Adding hedging tools to the tool kit now allows your bank to get ready before next quarter’s volatility — and potential rate change — is best practice that can be accomplished quickly and efficiently.

Bank Compensation Survey Results: Findings Released

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NASHVILLE, TENN., June 21, 2022 – Bank Director, the leading information resource for directors and officers of financial institutions nationwide, today released the results of its 2022 Compensation Survey, sponsored by Newcleus Compensation Advisors. The findings confirm that intensifying competition for talent is forcing banks to pay up for both new hires and existing employees.

The 2022 Compensation Survey finds that 78% of responding directors, human resources officers, CEOs and other senior executives of U.S. banks say that it was harder in 2021 to attract and keep talent compared to past years. In response to this increased pressure, 98% say their organization raised non-executive pay in 2021, and 85% increased executive compensation. Overall, compensation increased by a median 5%, according to participants.

“Banks are challenged to find specialized talent like commercial lenders and technology personnel, but they’re also struggling to hire branch staff and fill entry-level roles,” says Emily McCormick, Bank Director’s vice president of research. “In this quest for talent, community banks are competing with big banks like Bank of America Corp., which recently raised its minimum wage to $22 an hour. But community banks are also competing against other industries that have been raising pay. How can financial institutions stand out as employers of choice in their markets?”

Asked about specific challenges in attracting talent, respondents cite an insufficient number of qualified applicants (76%) and unwillingness among candidates to commute for at least some of their schedule (28%), in addition to rising wages. Three-quarters indicate that remote or hybrid work options are offered to at least some staff.

“It is obvious from the survey results that talent is the primary focus for community banks,” says Flynt Gallagher, president of Newcleus Compensation Advisors. “Recruiting and retaining talent has become a key focus for most community banks, surpassing other concerns that occupied the top spot in prior surveys — namely tying compensation to performance. It is paramount for community banks to step up their game when it comes to understanding what their employees value and improving their reputation and presence on social media. Otherwise, financial institutions will continue to struggle finding and keeping the people they need to succeed.”

Key Findings Also Include:

Banks Pay Up
Banks almost universally report increased pay for employees and executives. Of these, almost half believe that increased compensation expense has had an overall positive effect on their company’s profitability and performance. Forty-three percent say the impact has been neutral.

Commercial Bankers in Demand
Seventy-one percent expect to add commercial bankers in 2022. Over half of respondents say their bank did not adjust its incentive plan for commercial lenders in 2022, but 34% have adjusted it in anticipation of more demand.

Additional Talent Needs
Banks also plan to add technology talent (39%), risk and compliance personnel (29%) and branch staff (25%) in 2022. Respondents also indicate that commercial lenders, branch and entry-level staff, and technology professionals were the most difficult positions to fill in 2020-21.

Strengthening Reputations as Employers
Forty percent of respondents say their organization monitors its reputation on job-posting platforms such as Indeed or Glassdoor. Further, 59% say they promote their company and brand across social media to build a reputation as an employer of choice, while just 20% use Glassdoor, Indeed or similar platforms in this manner. Banks are more likely to let dollars build their reputation: Almost three-quarters have raised starting pay for entry-level roles.

Low Concerns About CEO Turnover
Sixty-one percent of respondents indicate that they’re not worried about their CEO leaving for a competing financial institution, while a third report low to moderate levels of concern. More than half say their CEO is under the age of 60. Respondents report a median total compensation spend for the CEO at just over $600,000.

Remote Work Persists
Three quarters of respondents say they continue to offer remote work options for at least some of their staff, and the same percentage also believe that remote work options help to retain employees. Thirty-eight percent of respondents believe that remote work hasn’t changed their company’s culture, while 31% each say it has had either a positive or negative impact.

The survey includes the views of 307 independent directors, CEOs, HROs and other senior executives of U.S. banks below $100 billion in assets. Compensation data for directors, non-executive chairs and CEOs was also collected from the proxy statements of 96 publicly traded banks. Full survey results are now available online at BankDirector.com.

About Bank Director
Bank Director reaches the leaders of the institutions that comprise America’s banking industry. Since 1991, Bank Director has provided board-level research, peer-insights and in-depth executive and board services. Built for banks, Bank Director extends into and beyond the boardroom by providing timely and relevant information through Bank Director magazine, board training services and the financial industry’s premier event, Acquire or Be Acquired. For more information, please visit www.BankDirector.com.

About Newcleus
Newcleus powers organizations as the leading designer and administrator of compensation, benefit, investment and finance strategies. The personalized product selections, carrier solutions and talent retention programs are curated to optimize benefits and improve ROI. www.newcleus.com.

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For more information, please contact Bank Director’s Director of Marketing, Deahna Welcher, at [email protected].

Advice to Bank Directors: Don’t Be Reactive on Credit Quality

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With credit quality metrics at generationally stellar levels, concern about credit risk in 2022 may seem unwarranted, making any deployed defensive strategies appear premature.

For decades, banking has evolved into an orientation that takes most of its risk management cues from external stakeholders, including investors, trusted vendors, market conditions — and regulators in particular. Undoubtedly, becoming defensive prematurely can add challenges for management teams at a time when loan growth is still a main strategic objective. But waiting until credit metrics pivot is sure to add risk and potential pain. Banks have four key reasons to be more vigilant in 2022 and the next couple of years. These, and the suggested steps that prudent management teams should take in their wake, are below.

1. The Covid-19 sugar high has turned sour.
All of the government largesse and regulatory respites in response to Covid-19 helped unleash 40-year-high inflation levels. In response, the Federal Reserve has begun ramping up interest rates at potential intervals not experienced in decades. These factors are proven to precede higher credit stress. Continuing supply chain disruptions further contribute and strengthen the insidious inflation psychology that weighs on the economy.

Recommendation: Bankers must be more proactive in identifying borrowers who are particularly vulnerable to growing marketplace pressures by using portfolio analytics to identify credit hotspots, increased stress testing and more robust loan reviews.

2. Post-booking credit servicing is struggling across the industry.
From IntelliCredit’s perspective, garnered through conducting current loan reviews and merger and acquisition due diligence, the post-booking credit servicing area is where most portfolio management deficiencies occur. Reasons include borrowers who lag behind in providing current financials or — even worse — banks experiencing depletions in the credit administration staff that normally performs annual reviews. These talent shortages reflect broader recruitment and retention challenges, and are exacerbated by growing salary inflation.

Recommendation: A new storefront concept may be emerging in community banking. Customer-facing services and products are handled by the bank, and back-shop operational and risk assessment responsibilities are supported in a co-opt style by correspondent banking groups or vendors that are specifically equipped to deliver this type of administrative support.

3. Chasing needed loan growth during a credit cycle shift is risky.
Coming out of the pandemic, community banks have lagged behind larger institutions with regards to robust organic loan growth, net of Paycheck Protection Program loans. Even at the Bank Director 2022 Acquire or Be Acquired Conference, investment bankers reminded commercial bankers of the critical link between sustainable loan growth and their profitability and valuation models. However, the risk-management axiom of “Loans made late in a benign credit cycle are the most toxic” has become a valuable lesson on loan vintages — especially after the credit quality issues that banks experienced during the Great Recession.

Recommendation: Lending, not unlike banking itself, is a balancing game. This should be the time when management teams and boards rededicate themselves to concurrent growth and risk management credit strategies, ensuring that any growth initiatives the bank undertakes are complemented by appropriate risk due diligence.

4. Stakeholders may overreact to any uptick in credit stress.
Given the current risk quality metrics, banker complacency is predictable and understandable. But regulators know, and bankers should understand, that these metrics are trailing indicators, and do not reflect the future impact of emerging, post-pandemic red flags that suggest heightened economic challenges ahead. A second, unexpected consequence resulting from more than a decade of good credit quality is the potential for unwarranted overreactions to a bank’s first signs of credit degradation, no matter how incremental.

Recommendation: It would be better for investors, peers and certainly regulators to temper their instincts to overreact — particularly given the banking industry’s substantial cushion of post Dodd-Frank capital and reserves.

In summary, no one knows the extent of credit challenges to come. Still, respected industry leaders are uttering the word “recession” with increasing frequency. Regarding its two mandates to manage employment and inflation, the Fed right now is clearly biased towards the latter. In the meantime, this strategy could sacrifice banks’ credit quality. With that possibility in mind, my advice is for directors and management teams to position your bank ahead of the curve, and be prepared to write your own credit risk management scripts — before outside stakeholders do it for you.

Inflation, Interest Rates and ‘Inevitable’ Recession Complicate Risks

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What is the bigger risk to banks: inflation, or the steps the Federal Reserve is taking to bring it to heel?

Community banks are buffeted by an increasingly complicated operating environment, said speakers at Bank Director’s 2022 Bank Audit and Risk Committees Conference in Chicago, held June 13 to 15. In rather fortuitous timing, the conference occurred in advance of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee’s June meeting, where expectations were high for another potential increase in the federal funds rate. 

On one hand, inflation remains high. On the other hand, rapidly increasing interest rates aimed at interrupting inflation are also increasing risk for banks — and could eventually put the economy into a tailspin. Accordingly, interest rates and the potential for a recession were the biggest issues that could impact banks over the next 12 to 18 months, according to a pop up poll of some 250 people attending the event.  

Brandon Koeser, a financial services senior analyst at audit and consulting firm RSM US, said that inflation is the “premier risk” to the economic outlook right now. He called the consumer price index trend line “astonishing” — and its upward path may still have some momentum, given persistently high energy prices. Just days prior, on June 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the CPI increased 1% in May, to 8.6% over the last 12 months. 

Koeser also pointed out that inflation is morphing, broadening from goods into services. That “rotation” creates a stickiness in the market that will be harder for the Federal Reserve to fight, increasing the odds that inflation persists.

It is “paramount” that the economy regain some semblance of price stability, Koeser said. In response, central bankers are increasing the pace, and potential size, of federal fund rate increases. But jacking up rates to lower prices without causing a recession is a blunt approach akin to “trying to thread a needle wearing boxing gloves,” he said.

While higher interest rates are generally good for banks, an inflationary environment could dampen loan growth while intensifying interest rate and credit risk, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s 2022 Risk Review. Inflation could lead consumers to cut back on spending, leading to lower business sales, and it could make it harder for borrowers to afford their payments.

At the same time, banks awash in pandemic liquidity added longer-term assets in 2021 in an attempt to capture some yield. Assets with maturities that were longer than three years made up 39% of assets at banks in 2021, compared with 36% in 2019, according to the FDIC. Community banks were even more vulnerable. Longer-term assets made up 52% of total assets at community banks at the end of 2021.

Managing this interest rate risk could be a challenge for banks that lack institutional knowledge of this unique environment. Kyle Manny, a partner at audit and consulting firm Plante Moran, pointed out that many banks are staffed with individuals who weren’t working in the industry in the 1980s or prior. He shared an anecdote of a seasoned banker who admitted he was “caught flat footed” by taking too much risk on the yield curve in the securities portfolio, and was now paying the price after the fair value of those assets fell. 

And high enough rates may ultimately send the economy into a recession. In Koeser’s poll of the audience, about 34% of audience members believe a recession will occur within the next six months; another 36% saw one as likely occurring in the next six to 12 months. Koeser said he doesn’t think it’s “impossible” for the central bank to avert a recession with a soft landing — but the margin for error is getting so small that a downturn may be “inevitable.”

Banks have limited options in the face of such macroeconomic trends, but they can still manage their own credit risk. David Ruffin, principal at credit risk analytics firm IntelliCredit, a division of Qwickrate, said that credit metrics today are the most “pristine” he had seen in his nearly 50 years in the industry. Still, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and inflation could hide emerging credit risk on community bank portfolios. Kamal Mustafa, chairman of the strategic advisory firm Invictus Group, advised bankers to dig into their loan categories, industry by industry, to analyze how different borrowers will be impacted by these countervailing forces. Not all businesses in a specific industry will be impacted equally, he said.

So while banks can’t control the environment, they can at least understand their own loan books.