Bank Loan Leading Indicators

I recently shared a long ride with a colleague discussing a Capital Plan project we were working on. In Capital Plans, you would typically use baseline projections, usually taken from the strategic plan, and apply adverse events that, based on the bank's balance sheet and strategy, can occur. Even if they are not particularly likely to occur. 

But it's planning. And planning for bad stuff is part of planning. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows.

As part of our commute discussion, we talked about leading versus lagging indicators of adverse events in order to reduce the impact of such events. Many if not most adverse events are beyond the bank's control. Because risks don't typically come home to roost at the time the Board or Management decide to accept the risk. Lagging indicators are easy, such as the migration from 30-89 days past due, 90+ past due, and non-accrual loans.

But lagging indicators are history. It would've been nice to know that Lee Harvey Oswald was heading to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Unless you're Oliver Stone. Then you're wondering who Lyndon Johnson is talking to. I digress. Stopping Oswald or diverting him likely would've ended in a different result.

Can banks identify leading indicators that can reduce risk at the right time?

I was never a lender. And my firm is not in Loan Review or other areas involved with the evaluation of credit. Nor are we an ALCO firm, estimating Interest Rate Risk or Liquidity Risk. But we do Strategic Plans, Capital Plans, Process Reviews and General Advisory that deals with how banks identify and mitigate risk. 

Credit risk remains the greatest risk to a financial institution by far, in my opinion. Not even close. Although examiners and consultants will tick off a laundry list of risks that could put your bank in peril, like reputation risk. The way reputation risk is likely to roost is through liquidity risk. Customers lose confidence in your bank and your liquidity position takes a nosedive. But has many financial institutions suffered as much reputational damage as Wells Fargo recently? And their liquidity ratio is over 40%. They have plenty of liquidity.

No, I'll stand by my credit risk statement. Take the IndyMac domino effect. They had credit problems that came home to roost, Senator Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to the OTS about the bank's problems, and due to the reputation risk customers made a run on the bank. Liquidity is what put them under. Credit is what pushed the first domino.

Identifying leading indicators for credit risk isn't particularly difficult. Finding research that makes the correlation is. But I will list what I think are common-sense leading indicators to credit risk that may very well be effective, and hopefully can be tracked and monitored automatically so we don't have seven risk management analysts on staff hunting and gathering data.

JFB's Credit Risk Leading Indicators

1.  Residential and Commercial Real Estate, and Construction Lending: Trend of days on market (by property type)

2.  Residential and Commercial Real Estate, and Construction Lending: Trend of the difference between initial asking price and actual sale price (by property type)

3.  Commercial and Consumer Lending: Trend of average balance per commercial checking (by NAICS code), and retail checking accounts

4. Residential and Construction Lending: Trend of price index for single family homes under construction

5. Residential, Commercial Real Estate, and Construction Lending: Average checking account balance trends for your customers in the Real Estate Development NAICS

6.  Commercial Real Estate and Multi-family Lending: Trends in occupancy rates.

These are a few that I have seen or make sense to me. Could they be downloaded into a dashboard so bank management could see the trends, and modify risk appetites to curtail new lending in categories that are showing yellow or red? And advise your bank's borrowers on how to navigate difficult times to preserve their business to fight another day?

Do you agree with the above indicators and what others should be considered?

~ 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.