Bank Brand Value: Calculated!

I ask and ask and ask: what does brand get you?

Does it get you pricing power, shorter sales cycles, better employees, more loyal customers? Or does it get you increased expenses without measurable results?

Forbes calculated brand value in their "World's Most Valuable Brands" by taking anything that a company achieves over an 8% return on equity. Many people pay close attention to the ranking. Although I find the calculation to be arbitrary. What if the company is more capital intensive, and has to carry more capital than other companies? So the ROE is lower. Or what if a company is excellent at expense control? Driving ROE higher, but hardly due to its brand.

No, I do not like Forbes' calculation. It particularly doesn't work well for financial institutions. Which is probably why the first bank on their list is ranked 43rd. And it's Wells Fargo! Didn't help out Tim Sloan.

Bank Brand Value ("BBV")

So how would I calculate a financial institution's brand value? When I speak, I use great brand images such as Starbucks, JW Marriott, and Mercedes Benz. Why do these brands command higher price points than Dunkin, Best Western, and Kia?

Price points. A superior brand usually would command superior price points. And we can measure this by looking at a financial institution's cost of interest bearing deposits, and yield on loans, compared to other regional players that have similar balance sheets. Spread is usually 80%-85% of a community bank's revenues. An inferior or non-existent brand likely grows deposits and loans via decisions made in pricing committee.

Math

Fortunately, we have good data via Call Reports to make the calculation. And I propose the BBV method so you can calculate and track your BBV.

The first step is to select regional financial institutions with a similar size, in the below case $1 billion - $10 billion in total assets. I selected a bank in this group, First Bank of Nashville, Tennessee, because I was recently there. I then searched for banks with a similar loan composition to First Bank; fifty-to sixty percent commercial and commercial real estate loans to total loans. I netted yield on loans by their npa's/loans so those banks with riskier loan books are discounted. Banks that achieve a better than median yield on loans after netting npa's/loans, with a similar loan book in a similar region, likely do so because they are perceived to deliver better value to customers. i.e. brand. And First Bank passes this test, achieving 78 basis points over the loan peer median.

I then ran a second peer group for cost of interest bearing deposits. I kept it regional, and the same asset size range. And used less than 30% funded with time deposits, as First Bank was funded 27% with CDs. I could not use transaction accounts because of financial institutions' reclassing transaction accounts to savings/ money market accounts to reduce their Fed requirement. 

Anything under the median cost of interest bearing deposits, I attributed to brand. This didn't work out so well for First Bank, as their cost of interest bearing deposits was 37 basis points greater than deposit peer median. 

And then I added those two numbers together, giving a pre-tax brand value, and then tax effecting it and calculate as a percent of net income. If the bank is publicly traded, as First Bank is (Ticker: FBK), you can then calculate the BBV percent of net income as the percent of market capitalization to get an aggregate brand value. If not a publicly traded bank, you can calculate the BBV contribution to net income and multiply by a peer p/e multiple to get your aggregate BBV.

My suggestion is that you trend your BBV, looking to continuously improve. In First Bank's case, I would look to maintain my loan BBV advantage, and continuously improve my deposit one. 

Imagine continuous improvement of BBV as a strategic planning SMART goal?

See the table. Calculate your own BBV. How did you fare?

~ Jeff

Stupid Bank Names

In the mid to late 1990's, my employer, First National Bank of Maryland based in Baltimore, bought Harrisburg, Pennsylvania based Dauphin Deposit Bank. They put together a transition team. I was on

that team. One of our responsibilities was coming up with a new name. After thousands of hours and millions of dollars, Allfirst was born. And hence the title for this blog post.

Are you going through a similar exercise? With Allfirst still fresh in my psyche, I occasionally throw stupid bank names at bankers contemplating a name change to increase the likelihood they won't make the same mistake. Here is what I came up with so far...

Allfirst - My poster child for stupid bank names. They didn't even include bank in their marketing materials, leaving customers and potential customers wondering, who?

Open Bank - I featured Open Bank in my annual total return top 5. Kudos for delivering value to their shareholders. As for their name... what if they are closed?

First Bank - The context of this blog post is for considering a new name. I know many of you may be named First Bank because that's the way it was 100 years ago, or your name was First Savings Bank and you dumped the Savings or First National Bank and you dumped the OCC. But there are 77 other First Banks in the country. If your brand strives for assimilation, then go with it.

Rabobank - Not a large leap to Rob A Bank.

IndyMac Bank, FSB - Sound like a burger joint to anyone else?

First Integrity Bank - This Minnesota bank failed in 2008. If you have to put integrity in your name, well... The same with Honest, Fair, or any other similar name describing behavior that should be part of the culture. The exception being Trust, since this is a distinct charter and/or service offering. I may get a call from my friends at a similarly named bank near my home on this one. But they should've given me a call before printing the letterhead.

Bank of Bird In Hand - This is an Amish focused bank. Named for the town where it is located. So they probably don't view the name with the same smirk as me. And no, for my non-Pennsylvania friends, you cannot drive from Blue Ball, through Bird In Hand, on to Intercourse, and arrive in Paradise. All Central Pennsylvania towns. But not lined up in that order. My point here is, not every town name should be on your billboard.

MutualBank - On the surface, not a bad name. And I may get an e-mail from my FMS friend, Chris Cook. But truth be told, MutualFirst Financial of Muncie, Indiana, the holding company for MutualBank, is publicly traded. It's not a mutual.

BestBank - A distinction earned, not bestowed. Same with Superior Bank, etc.

Excel Bank - A spreadsheet?

K Bank - In today's abbreviated texting and social media world, this is a bad name, K?

Innovative Bank - Through the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression, only about 5% of FDIC-insured financial institutions failed. Could being in the 5% group qualify you as innovative?

This is only a small list of banks based on my personal knowledge and some database searches. I'm sure there are more out there.

You may be surprised that I excluded some names such as the often lampooned poster child for stupid bank names, Fifth Third Bank. But it is a distinctive name, that has been around for a long, long time. I also respect some old school bank names, such as Old Second, etc. And banks with small town names that don't result in sophomoric snickers are also fine, in my opinion. Even affinity branded banks, like Red Neck Bank (actual division of a bank), have some merit.

So if you are grappling with the bank name issue, make sure that when you are presented with options as to what to call your bank, take a step back, and think. Ask somebody outside of the re-branding process. Common sense trumps a marketing study.

What other stupid bank names are out there or were out there?

~ Jeff

P.S. If I offended anyone, I apologize.