Bank Director | Market Share Archives

3 Ways to Help Businesses Manage Market Uncertainty

Posted on August 30, 2022 at 12:01 am.

Amid mounting regulatory scrutiny, heightened competition and rising interest rates, senior bank executives are increasingly looking to replace income from Paycheck Protection Program loans, overdrafts and ATM fees, and mortgage originations with other sources of revenue. The right capital markets solutions can enable banks of all sizes to better serve their business customers in times of financial uncertainty, while growing noninterest income.

Economic and geopolitical conditions have created significant market volatility. According to Nasdaq Market Link, since the beginning of the year through June 30, the Federal Reserve lifted rates 150 basis points, and the 10-year Treasury yielded between 1.63% and 3.49%. Wholesale gasoline prices traded between $2.26 and $4.28 per gallon during the same time span. Corn prices rose by as much as 39% from the start of the year, and aluminum prices increased 31% from January 1 but finished down 9% by the end of June. Meanwhile, as of June 30, the U.S. dollar index has strengthened 11% against major currencies from the start of the year.

Instead of worrying about interest rate changes, commodity-based input price adjustments or the changing value of the U.S. dollar, your customers want to focus on their core business competencies. By mitigating these risks with capital market solutions, banks can balance their business customers’ needs for certainty with their own desire to grow noninterest income. Here are three examples:

Interest Rate Hedging
With expectations for future rate hikes, many commercial borrowers prefer fixed rate financing for interest rate certainty. Yet many banks prefer floating rate payments that benefit from rising rates. Both can achieve the institution’s goals. A bank can provide a floating rate loan to its borrower, coupled with an interest rate hedge to mitigate risk. The bank can offset the hedge with a swap dealer and potentially book noninterest income.

Commodity Price Hedging
Many commercial customers — including manufacturers, distributors and retailers — have exposure to various price risks related to energy, agriculture or metals. These companies may work with a commodities futures broker to hedge these risks but could be subject to minimum contract sizes and inflexible contract maturity dates. Today, there are swap dealers willing to provide customized, over-the-counter commodity hedges to banks that they can pass down to their customers. The business mitigates its specific commodity price risk, while the bank generates noninterest income on the offsetting transaction.

International Payments and Foreign Exchange Hedging
Since 76% of companies that conduct business overseas have fewer than 20 employees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there is a good chance your business customers engage in international trade. While some choose to hedge the risk of adverse foreign exchange movements, all have international payment needs. Banks can better serve these companies by offering access to competitive exchange rates along with foreign exchange hedging tools. In turn, banks can potentially book noninterest income by leveraging a swap dealer for offsetting trades.

Successful banks meet the needs of their customers in any market environment. During periods of significant market volatility, businesses often prefer interest rate, commodity price or foreign exchange rate certainty. Banks of all sizes can offer these capital markets solutions to their clients, offset risks with swap dealers and potentially generate additional income.

The Rustle About the Russell

Posted on March 29, 2022 at 12:01 am.

Written by Erin Register

The upcoming annual Russell reconstitution is undoubtedly a frequent topic of conversation and concern for smaller public banks. For these institutions and potentially many others, recent regulatory updates provide a viable alternative.

On an annual basis, a team at FTSE Russell evaluates the composition of their indices and rebalances the portfolio of the top 3,000 companies. This “annual reconstitution” can produce an unfortunate side effect: smaller companies on the lower end of an index’s minimum market capitalization threshold may find that they no longer qualify for inclusion when the threshold increases. These firms can experience a semi-annual whipsaw — sometimes they make the cut, other times they don’t.

When a company is removed from “The Russell,” index fund managers no longer hold shares in that company. In fact, a Russell Index mutual fund manager would be in violation of several rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission if they trade in a ticker that no longer included in an index that they market themselves as tracking.

In simplest terms, when a company is bounced from the Russell, it’s bounced from the $11 trillion pool of index-fund portfolios. For smaller companies that tend to be otherwise thinly traded, this can be a major problem. Many banks that were removed from the Russell at the last re-balance saw a decrease of 30% in their stock, virtually overnight.

The One-Two Punch
Russell indices have a long list of securities they exclude. It is probably easier for most people to think of the composition of Russell’s US-based indices as including only public securities that are “listed” on an exchange, like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

Maintaining an exchange listing can be a major ongoing commitment of a firm’s time and money. U.S. exchange listing fees are based on a bank’s market capitalization and total shares outstanding; listing additional shares and corporate actions incur added costs for banks.

So what happens when a listed company gets bounced from the Russell? Share prices drop because index funds begin selling positions en masse, and liquidity dries up as index funds buyers disappear. But the firm remains listed on the exchange, footing the bill for the related ongoing compliance overhead or face a de-listing. In turn, the firm ends up incurring all of the costs and reaps none of the benefits.

Where to go from here?
Some estimates suggest that the minimum qualification criteria for some of Russell’s most popular indices will increase the minimum market cap from $250 million to about $299 million. For banks, this generally means over $2 billion in assets. This is an unfortunate fate for listed banks that may find themselves in the crosshairs; for dozens of others, it may mean further postponing plans for an IPO.

But an alternative does exist that smaller banks can uniquely benefit from. Recent overhauling of SEC Rule 15c2-11 positions the OTCQX Market as a regulated public market solution for U.S. regional and community banks. The market provides a cost-effective alternative that leverages bank regulatory reporting standards and can save banks around $500,000 a year compared to listing on an exchange.

Many of the banks that trade on OTCQX are under $350 million in market cap and can choose to provide liquidity for their shareholders through a network of recognized broker-dealers and market makers.

One key takeaway for management teams is that unless an institution can qualify for inclusion in the Russell and grow rapidly enough to keep up with annual reconstitutions, it may be time for them to re-evaluate the value of trading on listed exchanges.

Banks, Fintechs Uniting for Bottom-Line Wins

Posted on September 30, 2020 at 12:01 am.

Written by Tricia Lesh

Banks have been losing consumer market share to fintechs for more than a decade. But in the middle of a pandemic, their focus has shifted to expediting consumer loan opportunities for balance sheet and bottom line wins. Why?

For one thing, deposit growth is well outpacing loan growth this year, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Quarterly Banking Profile. At the same time, tech companies like Apple and Amazon.com are dipping their big toes into the consumer finance industry. With less of a need to focus on growing bank deposits and an ever-growing list of competitors entering the lending market, banks should take — and are taking — more-calculated risks to maintain their relevance with digitally savvy customers at their points of financial need. To connect with prospective customers where they want to be reached, banks will need to rely on partners that can help them scale their offerings in a fast, frictionless and secure manner.

The easiest way for banks to lower customer acquisition costs and reach more prospective customers with loan opportunities is to use relevant plug-and-play technologies from fintechs. It’s hardly a new concept at this point; most leading banks have already adopted this methodology as the way to unlock more revenue. Per the Global Fintech Report, 94% of financial services companies said they were confident that fintechs would help grow their company’s revenue over the next two years; 95% of technology companies said the same.

The banks struggling to justify the need to partner are missing the big picture: growth opportunities and low-hanging fruit. Take business clients as an example. Far too many banks wait for a business to become frustrated at competitors before competing to win their business. A fintech partnership can help banks go on the offensive and create a strategy that positions businesses as the face of financing by offering point-of-need lending to consumers, driving revenue for the business and improving the bottom line at the bank.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” – American industrial and business magnate Henry Ford

Being open-minded about fintech partnerships allows banks to offer valuable and attractive services to business clients and consumers, especially at a time when both are faced with a life-altering pandemic and natural disasters. Consumers need quick access to credit at reasonable rates; in the face of excess liquidity from deposits and a continued low-rate environment, banks should be look to provide better loans for their customers than their online finance competitors.

Banks that choose not to use fintechs partners may find themselves lacking the ability to get embedded into consumer loan deals and unable to offer consumers a frictionless experience during the process. They can’t leverage alternative data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to get a more-accurate portrayal of a consumer’s creditworthiness outside of their FICO credit scores. Accessing value-add technology and creative solutions allows banks to innovate rapidly to improve efficiencies and meet the future needs of businesses and consumers.

Fintechs have demonstrated their ability to meet banks’ third-party standards. Banks sitting on the partnership sidelines are cautioned to set aside their “sword and shield” mentality in favor of an approach that’s more inviting and open to collaborative innovation. Today’s current economic environment can act as a catalyst for this change.

Banks have proven they are capable of being highly responsive to meet business and consumer needs during recent challenges. This is an opportunity for them to think differently and invest in partnerships to quickly offer new experiences as demand for financial products and services increases.

A Dangerous Force in Banking

Posted on August 23, 2019 at 2:40 pm.

Written by John Maxfield

The more you learn about banking, the more you realize that just a few qualities separate top-performing bankers from the rest.

One of the most important of these qualities, I believe, is the ability of bankers to combat what famed investor Warren Buffett calls the “institutional imperative.”

Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, wrote about this in his 1990 shareholder letter:

“The banking business is no favorite of ours. When assets are twenty times equity — a common ratio in this industry — mistakes that involve only a small portion of assets can destroy a major portion of equity. And mistakes have been the rule rather than the exception at many major banks. Most have resulted from a managerial failing that we described last year when discussing the ‘institutional imperative:’ the tendency of executives to mindlessly imitate the behavior of their peers, no matter how foolish it may be to do so.”

At the time, Buffett was referring to a credit-fueled bubble in the commercial real estate market. The bubble was in the process of popping; commercial real estate prices would decline 27% between 1989 and 1994.

The subprime mortgage and leveraged lending markets in the lead-up to the financial crisis offer more recent examples. No bank wanted to lose market share in either business line, even if doing so was prudent. This was the impetus for Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince III’s oft-repeated quote about having to dance until the music stops.

“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated,” Prince told the Financial Times in 2007. “But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”

Here’s the problem: A bank that loses market share is vulnerable to criticism by analysts and commentators.

In 2006, for instance, JPMorgan Chase & Co. began offloading sub-prime mortgages and pulling back from the market for collateralized debt obligations. “Analysts responded by giving JPMorgan Chase what one insider calls ‘a world of [expletive] for our fixed-income revenues,’” writes Duff McDonald in “Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase.”

“One of the toughest jobs of the CEO is to look at all the stupid stuff other people are doing and to not do them,” a long-time former colleague of JPMorgan’s Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon told McDonald.

You would think that analysts and commentators would, at some point, realize that it’s ill-advised to pressure bankers into prioritizing short-term results over long-term solvency, but there’s no evidence of that.

Darren King, the chief financial officer of M&T Bank Corp., noted at a conference in late 2018 that, “The narrative around the industry is that M&T has forgotten how to lend.”

M&T Bank has been one of the top-performing banks in the country since the early 1980s. King was referring to analysts and commentators’ reaction to the fact that M&T’s loan growth over the past two years has lagged the broader industry.

But as King went on to explain: “Generally what you find is when economic times are strong, we’re growing but generally not as fast as the industry. And in times of more economic stress, we tend to grow faster.”

So, how does a bank combat the institutional imperative?

The simple answer is that banks need to cultivate a culture that insulates decision-makers from external pressures to chase short-term performance. This culture is a product of temperament and training, as well as institutional knowledge about the frequency and consequences of past credit cycles.

This culture should be buttressed by structural support, too. Skin in the game among executives is a good example; a supportive board focused on the long term is another. A low efficiency ratio also enables a bank to focus on making better long-term decisions while still generating satisfactory returns.

In short, while the institutional imperative may be one of the most dangerous forces in banking, there are ways to defeat it.

Are You Overlooking a Major M&A Obstacle?

Posted on January 1, 2018 at 3:55 pm.

Written by myork

People often think about the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) in relation to its effect on large, public transactions. However, as smaller community banks look to merge with other small banks in their markets or in adjacent communities, the HHI is increasingly becoming an issue. This often overlooked component of a merger could cause significant regulatory impacts on the structure and success of a transaction. For example, one small community bank recently had to withdraw from a bid process because of insurmountable HHI concerns cited by the federal regulators.

What is the HHI?
The HHI is a commonly accepted measure of market concentration that is generally used when evaluating business combinations. It is calculated by squaring the market share of each bank competing in a given market and then summing the resulting numbers. As the number of banks in a market decreases or the disparity in size increases, the HHI will increase proportionately. A moderately concentrated market has an HHI of 1,500 to 2,500 points, and anything greater than 2,500 is considered heavily concentrated. Generally, if an acquisition will increase the HHI by more than 200 points, it will be heavily scrutinized by the federal regulators and may ultimately be rejected.

How Can You Assess Your Bank’s HHI Market?
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve created the Competitive Analysis and Structure Source Instrument for Depository Institutions (CASSIDI) to allow financial institutions to easily determine the effect that a proposed merger would have on the market’s HHI. It is a simple tool that allows anyone to run the HHI calculation on the financial institution of his or her choosing. The CASSIDI calculation can help bank management teams determine the necessary steps they may have to undertake in order to get a deal approved.

As explained above, the HHI calculation takes into account all banks in a certain market. CASSIDI allows users to search the markets to determine which market that a deal would fall into. However, the DOJ and the Federal Reserve have the ability to amend the market to include a larger or smaller area in the HHI calculation. Therefore, while CASSIDI may be very helpful, it can be an imperfect indicator of the validity of your transaction under the HHI calculation. It is important to contact your local regulator to determine the exact market that would be used for your proposed transaction. Your regulator will be able to assist you in running a more exact calculation if you suspect your proposed transaction may increase the HHI by over 200 points.

Are Credit Unions Included in the HHI?
At this time, the CASSIDI calculation does not include any market share held by credit unions. However, regulators may consider including credit unions in the structural concentration calculations in the event an application exceeds the delegation criteria in a given market. Generally, credit unions may be included in these calculations if two conditions are met: first, the field of membership includes all, or almost all, of the market population, and second, the credit union’s branches are easily accessible to the general public. In such instances and at the regulator’s discretion, a credit union’s deposits will be given 50 percent weight. If a credit union has a significant commercial lending presence and staff available for small business services, then its deposits may be eligible for 100 percent weighting, though such an outcome is very rare.

How Can You Fix an HHI Issue?
If you perform an HHI calculation and find that your proposed transaction will exceed the 200 point threshold, there are a few options to consider. You can assert that there are mitigating factors at play, or that a broader market should be considered. Another common solution is to divest certain legacy or acquired assets. For example, financial institutions will sometimes sell a branch in markets where the two parties compete directly in order to complete a merger. Over the past 40 years, divestiture has become an important antitrust remedy for parties looking to complete their deals. That being said, divestiture may not always be practical in a merger of two small banks with limited branch locations.

Financial institutions continue to see a large volume of merger activity. The current costs of operating a bank indicate that this activity will continue to grow. While the HHI is an obvious concern for large deals, it should be on the radar of small community banks as well. Your bank’s board and management team should analyze the anti-competitive effects of any proposed transaction early in the negotiation process.

The Battle Is Back On for Checking Customers

Posted on October 23, 2015 at 10:31 am.

Written by Mike Branton

As I was driving to a meeting the other week listening to the radio, I heard back-to-back commercials from two different banks about checking accounts. The first was a super-regional bank promoting that they would pay me $250 to move my checking account to them. The second, one of the mega banks (a top five bank in asset size) promoted a similar message but upped the incentive to $300 to switch.

When I got home later that day, I found a direct mail offer from another mega bank upping the incentive to $500.

I looked closer at the conditions of these incentives and found a similar nuanced strategic objective. These banks (and a few others I found online making similar offers) are clearly not returning to the days of “open a free account, get a free gift.” They aren’t looking for just consumers willing to switch their account to a free account with no commitment other than the minimum balance to open requirement (usually less than $50).

Rather, they are looking for those willing to switch their relationships that require a certain level of funding and banking activity (direct deposit, mobile banking activation, etc.) to earn part or all of the cash incentive. And these banks aren’t offering a totally free checking account.

Recognizing this as the objective, I perused a major online marketing research company to look for competitive responses from community financial institutions and found hardly any similar monetary offers. Those that were similar were mainly promoted just on their respective websites.

So what do these large banks know about these types of offers that community financial institutions don’t know (or deem important enough) to mount a credible competitive response? Reading and listening to presentations made to stock analysts by big bank management reveal that they know they can simply out market smaller community financial institutions, which don’t have or want to devote the financial resources for incentives at these levels.

They also know these smaller institutions’ customers, namely millennials, have grown disenchanted with inferior mobile banking products, and are looking for superior mobile products that the larger banks typically have. They are capitalizing on a growing attitude taking place in the market regarding consumers who switch accounts — 65 percent of switchers say mobile banking was extremely important or important to their switching decision, according to a survey by Alix Partners.

So by out-marketing and out-innovating retail products, larger banks know the battle is on to attract profitable or quick to be profitable customers, traditional ones right down to millennials who never set foot in a branch, by offering an attractive “earned” incentive to move and providing better mobile products along with a wider variety of other retail products and services.

Now community bankers reading this may be thinking, “That’s not happening at my bank.” Well, you better double-check. Last year, 78 percent of account switchers nationally were picked off by the 10 largest U.S. banks (and 82 percent of younger switchers) at the expense of community banks. Community banks lost 5 percent of switcher market share and credit unions lost 6 percent, according to Alix Partners.

And once these larger banks get these relationships, they aren’t losing them. Take a look at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chase Bank has driven down its attrition rate from over 14 percent in 2011 to just 9 percent in 2014 (an industry benchmark attrition rate is 18 percent). Also from 2010 to 2014, it has increased its cross-sell ratio by nearly 10 percent and average checking account balances have doubled.

With this kind of financial performance (not only by Chase but nearly all the top 10 largest banks), a negligible competitive marketing response from community institutions and a tentativeness to prioritize enhancing mobile checking related products, their cash offers from $250 to $500 to get consumers to switch accounts is a small price to pay.

Combining this with well-financed and marketing savvy fintech competitors also joining the battle to get customers to switch, the competitive heat will only get hotter as they attack the retail checking market share held by community institutions slow to respond or unwilling to do so.

So community banks and credit unions, what’s your next move?