The Case for Product Management in Banking

During a recent discussion with a bank CEO and Chief Banking Officer, a fundamental question arose: Why can't we leverage technology to create a smarter business checking account? Instead of the traditional "Analysis Checking" model, which often erodes potential interest earnings through transaction fees, why not design an account that pays interest based on a technology-determined average balance exceeding a certain threshold?

Given that Dodd-Frank permits interest on business checking accounts, this approach seems logical and customer-friendly. For businesses with higher transaction volumes, the average balance required to earn interest would naturally adjust upwards. This is a concept that is both transparent for the customer and operationally straightforward for bank staff. The average balance calculation could even be reset annually or more frequently to reflect actual account activity. Stuck in our historical paradigm, we don't ask ourselves how to create an easier to understand, more efficient, more transparent, and yes, more profitable business checking account.

The primary objection I've encountered? The bank would lose the fee income generated by Analysis Checking. However, a careful analysis might reveal that the lost fee income would be minimal given that we would charge fees if the account was under its interest-bearing threshold. And likely more profitable. 

This conversation sparked another critical challenge: How do banks profitably manage large money market deposit portfolios in a rising interest rate environment?

Consider a scenario with $1 billion in money market deposits. When the Federal Reserve raises rates by 100 basis points, the response isn't uniform. Some depositors are highly price-sensitive and expect their rates to move in lockstep with the Fed or just below. Others are "price-interested," perhaps seeking a beta of 50%, while some simply value the FDIC insurance and branch access for their cash accumulation, exhibiting low price sensitivity.

The core problem is the lack of clarity: We don't know who's who. The current approach often involves waiting for customers to inquire about rate changes. However, with technological advancements and the ease of funds transfer, many customers simply moved their money during the recent Fed tightening without a word.

This situation points to several potential shortcomings:

• Customers in the wrong accounts: Are some customers better suited for savings accounts than money market accounts?
• Subpar onboarding: Are we failing to identify the customer's reasons for opening the account and their sensitivity to rate fluctuations?
• Lack of sophisticated systems: Do we lack the tools to differentiate between price-sensitive, price-interested, and price-disinterested depositors?

The knee-jerk reaction might be to split the difference and proactively raise the money market rate by, say, 75 basis points. While seemingly fair, this could result in a significant $7.5 million reduction in net interest income.

I believe these challenges would be significantly mitigated by fostering a strong product management culture within the bank. This would involve establishing a dedicated head of product management and empowering up-and-coming middle managers with the responsibility for the continuous profit improvement of specific products.

Consider a retail money market product. Imagine assigning the VP or regional manager of the branch network as its product manager, directly accountable for its ongoing profitability. This individual could then actively manage various profit levers:

The product management committee meets quarterly to review trends in their products. They review the drivers to improve the profitability of the personal money market product. Some potential solutions from that meeting:

• Pricing Strategies: Dynamically adjusting rates based on customer segmentation and market conditions.
• Product Features: Introducing tiered interest rates based on balances or relationship status.
• Customer Segmentation: Identifying and targeting specific customer groups with tailored offerings.
• Communication & Marketing: Proactively informing customers of rate changes and highlighting product value.
• Onboarding Process: Implementing robust KYC Q&A to understand customer needs and price sensitivity.
• Process Improvements: To lower the amount of bank resources required to originate and maintain the account and lowering the OpEx per account.

Furthermore, the bank could consider developing new, differentiated money market products – perhaps something like "Money Market-Fort Knox" for price-insensitive customers and "Money Market-Wealth Builder" for those seeking competitive returns. This targeted approach would provide clearer insights into customer preferences and potentially prevent the significant outflow of deposits and decline in average balances experienced during the 2022-23 Fed tightening. Proactive engagement, rather than reactive adjustments based on customer complaints, would foster greater loyalty.

The fundamental hurdle, as I see it, is that many banks don't systematically measure the profitability of individual products. And even when they do, it's uncommon to assign dedicated product managers tasked with driving continuous profit improvement.

Should they? Absolutely.

While my firm offers outsourced product and organizational profitability services to banks, I firmly believe that all banks, particularly those with over $500 million in assets, should embrace this level of reporting, regardless of whether they partner with us. Consider this: a mere one basis point improvement in net interest margin at a $500 million bank translates to an additional $50,000 in net interest income. Scale that up if your financial institution is larger. The potential upside is substantial.

For further discussion on how a product management culture can benefit your institution, please contact Ben Crowley at bcrowley@kafafiangroup.com. 

Commercial Real Estate or Business Lending: Which Is Better?

Me: Commercial Real Estate loans are the most profitable product in a community bank's arsenal and have been through various interest rate environments.

Bank Senior Lender: Not when you consider the whole relationship.

True, it is more likely that a traditional business borrower has a full relationship with their bank than a typical commercial real estate (CRE) borrower. In a world of limited resources, which should you dedicate resources to pursue? This was the conversation I had with a senior lender of a client at the Massachusetts Bankers' Association annual convention.

And after that conversation, I sat in my hotel room thinking about the right answer. Since I rely heavily on data, I poured through my firm's product profitability reports that aggregates the answers from all of our clients. What does a "full relationship" mean? I thought, business loan plus a business checking account. The much sought after "operating account." How do these products perform through different interest rate environments?  

The charts below show the pre-tax profits as a percent of the total product portfolio during different rate scenarios compared to the Fed Funds Rate.

So the answer, from a straight pre-tax profit perspective, is commercial real estate in more recent times and a rising rate environment. In the falling rate environment period between the third quarter of 2007 until the fourth quarter of 2008, when the Fed Funds Rate dropped from 5.25% to zero, you can see from the chart that business checking did quite well in the early quarters because of the lag effect of falling rates on the profitability of non-term deposits. Having a Fed Funds Rate of 5.25% bolsters deposit profitability, as the chart demonstrates. By the time the FF hit zero at the end of 2008, CRE was the last product standing. It would have been more profitable if not for the heavy loan loss provisioning as the economy teetered. Zero rates bolsters the value of loan products as funding costs decline.

But what of the relationship? Take a more normal rate scenario at the end of 2018, when FF stood at 2.50%. The math is in the tables below.

All data are from my firm's product profitability database.

CRE still wins. Why? Two reasons, in my opinion: average balance per account, and operating expense per account. Banking is mostly a spread business, and if you are generating the same spread through a $216,732 balance account versus a $589,949 average balance account, as they were in 2018, then the larger balance account wins. Especially if it takes a similar effort to originate and maintain the account.

In spite of these numbers, I agree with my client that the total relationship commercial loan and business checking customer is more valuable. Just not necessarily more profitable. And banks should determine their "why" and set about to change it.

In the above case, there are multiple levers to press. Lever one, increase the average balance of commercial loans to drive greater spread dollars. This could be through industry specialization, focusing on those that carry greater average balances or utilize their lines of credit with greater frequency. It could be through cost by automating decisioning for smaller loans or, for example, using AI to perform annual reviews or do them bi-annually for loans that meet certain criteria. 

Another consideration to improving the profitability of commercial loans is to perform a risk-based equity allocation. I understand this is financial alchemy, but most of our clients allocate more capital to the business loan because it has less reliable collateral. But commercial loans, if analyzed for total risk (not just credit risk), also are typically less risky for interest rate and liquidity risks. A bank that takes a complete view of the risk and therefore the equity needed to support each product type might determine that a commercial loan might require less capital than a CRE loan. 

Deposit profitability suffers in a zero rate environment because we are simply not generating enough spread to cover costs. But in a more normalized environment, such as 4Q18, it was profitable and profits were trending better. The pre-tax ROA might not look great. Because there is little credit risk to the product it requires little equity to account for interest rate, liquidity, and operational risk. This creates a stellar PT ROE, the best of the three products measured here.

So even though CRE remains the most profitable product to a community bank, it is not necessarily the most valuable. But we have work to do.

~ Jeff

Could Net Interest Margin Woes Spell Opportunity?

When an in-person strategic planning retreat has to be hastily switched to a virtual one, sacrifices must be made. And in this case, I simply didn't have the time to review the long-term implications of the Fed's guidance that they were not inclined to raise the Fed Funds Rate until inflation hit or passed 2%. And they didn't anticipate that until 2023.

So we're in this environment together. Negative rates are not likely. Fed Chairman Powell is against that approach. The change from 2.25%-2.5% in 2019 to the 0%-0.25% year to date has resulted in the revenues per product to go down in all deposit products with the exception of money market accounts (see table).

The table is from my firm's profitability peer database, where we measure product profitability for dozens of community financial institutions. The above are peer averages.

The net revenue decline in business loans makes sense because these portfolios tend to have a high proportion of variable rates. What we learned from 2007-08 was to put floors in them, so hopefully the downward trend won't continue. Residential mortgages net revenue went up although we intuitively know that the 30-year rate has gone down. But for measuring product profitability, this number represents what the bank portfolios. Which is probably very little given the rate environment. The coveted gain on sale revenues from secondary market activities goes in the secondary market product, and the residential mortgage line of business.

In 2009, being armed with the above product profitability data, plus the profit trends in their branches, the very large financial institutions began closing branches en-masse. And since the floor fell out on the Fed Funds Rate this year, several including PNC, Wells, and US Bank announced more accelerated closures. From March through August, banks submitted closure requests to regulators for 893 branches. During the same time last year, 967 were submitted. So there was an 8% drop.   

But I think, faced with the declining revenues and their high depositor retention from past closures, more will be announced. Does this signal an opportunity for the financial institution with a long-term view to aggressively pursue core deposits in the face of reduced short-term profitability of those deposits? Especially if the bank could put those deposits to work at some positive spread, which we have to believe we can. 

It wouldn't bode well for your net interest margin. But could certainly generate growth in net interest income. And position your bank for the often repeated cycle of positive economic growth where loans grow faster than deposits for multiple years. When that happens, your competitors will start offering $400 for customers to switch deposit accounts. 

But you would have already won them.

~ Jeff

Note: The above data was taken from my firm's profitability peer database. If you want to learn how you can measure product profitability, line of business profitability, or customer profitability, click here.  

Three Ways to Align Marketing With Profitability

The inability to connect Marketing activities to the bottom line is what I frequently hear from bankers that think the Marketing Department is a cost center. Measurement is difficult. 

I also hear that silos are a problem in banking. Yet Marketing is frequently held to account for the ROI of the checking or home equity campaign. And branch bankers say they weren't consulted nor were they included in promotion planning. They often hear of the campaign on the radio while driving home. 

If you read my articles, watch my videos, or have heard me speak you know I'm a big proponent of the Marketing function taking a more prominent role in banks because customer acquisition and the customer experience has changed so much in the past decade. There must be an integrated, cross functional approach to acquiring, onboarding, and serving customers well to deepen relationships and turn them into champions of your brand. And that includes support functions. Nothing is more frustrating than turning a raving fan customer into a cynic because they get buzz sawed by the wire transfer person at HQ.

I have a bias towards profitability and against widgets. I remember doing a process review at a bank where one branch had hundreds of checking accounts with $100 or less. When I asked... you know the answer, right? A CD promotion that required opening a checking account. Widget counting. If the branch manager was accountable for consistently improving the profitability of her branch, and the Marketer was responsible for the continuous profit improvement of retail checking, this wouldn't have happened. Because having hundreds of low balance retail checking accounts attracts cost, with little revenue. But I bet you the CD promotion report had none of this.

So here is what I suggest:

1. Make profitability the ultimate accountability. 

Mandatory disclosure, my firm measures line of business, product, and feeds to customer profitability systems. And I work diligently with banks to analyze, adjust, and improve their profit trends using this information. Because I believe it is the way to go. Imagine if Marketing were responsible for the continuous improvement of the home equity line of credit product (see table).

The pushback from using profit and profit trend as the ultimate accountability, and not just from Marketing mind you, is that there are so many things outside the control of the marketer. True. But isn't that the case for any line of business with their profit and loss responsibilities? I have no control over the D&O insurance premium at my firm. But I'm sure as heck responsible for the firm's profitability. Which leads me to my second way to hold Marketing accountable.

2.  Implement Product Management. 

Which is totally related to (1) above. If Marketing was accountable for managing the HELOC product, wouldn't they engage in cross-functional collaboration to improve the profit picture? For example, in examining the above table, it is clear that the Bank has done a good job at increasing the product's spread. Fee income has been flat. And operating expense as a percent of the portfolio has been rising, even as the portfolio has been growing. Aha! What is afoot? Is credit underwriting manual? Do customers apply online and the loan moves seamlessly and electronically through the bank's underwriting, closing, and booking process? Does someone in loan servicing spend half their time on insurance tracking? i.e. are your processes scalable and efficient? Did you have a $100,000 marketing spend to generate 10 loans? All would be on the table as the person responsible for the continuous profit improvement collaborates with all areas of the bank that touch the product to improve the profit trend. And if the HELOC profit trend improves, branches will be more profitable (if they are the line of business responsible for HELOC origination).

3.  Identify Root Causes and Track Improvement. 

I'm currently reading the book Everything They Told You About Marketing Is Wrong by Ron Shevlin. In it, Ron says "The key to future profitability isn't in simply keeping customers-it's from deepening their relationships. And engagement is a necessary precondition for that to happen." There's that profitability word. What was Ron thinking? But fine, let's assume that "engagement" is key to keeping and deepening relationships. What the heck is engagement? Ron says it's whatever the bank thinks it is. And here was the chart from the book to highlight the point: 

I took a picture from my Kindle. Don't judge.

I asked Ron how to measure it, and he sent me a slide deck that showed it was measured by survey. If there was evidence that there was a strong correlation between engagement and customer profitability, I think the savvy marketer can measure it without having to perform surveys in today's AI and CRM world. But let's assume engagement deepens and lengthens a relationship. Let's look at the profit trend of a business interest checking product.

This product is much more profitable than the HELOC. In terms of ROE, fuhgetaboutit. So profitability should drive what marketing initiatives you implement.

Back to increasing engagement to increase profitability. If Marketing was responsible for assisting bankers migrate customers from low, to medium, to high engagement, how would that impact the profit picture? For one, it would lessen the operating expense as a percent of the product portfolio, because there would be no Know Your Customer, Address Checks, promotions to win a new customer, etc. And second, the deposit spread would increase because the duration (CFO term) of the product would increase, yielding a greater FTP Credit for Funds. 

By increasing the profitability of Business Interest Checking, you also increase the profitability of branches that are generally responsible for deposits, and possibly the commercial lender if the bank measures their portfolio profitability, including the deposits they brought in. 

So identify root causes with high correlation to improving product profitability, and measure Marketing on them. 

This level of accountability breaks down silos as Marketing now works with various departments within the bank to improve the profit picture, and aligns Marketing interests with those of profit centers (i.e. no hundreds of low balance checking accounts). When product and therefore line of business profitability goes up, so goes the bank.

What's stopping you?

~ Jeff

How To Do Product Management Without Product Profitability

Quick answer: I don't know.

I posited this question on Twitter because product management has come up during various financial institution strategic planning sessions. I also don't know of many new banking products since I've been in the business. See my post on that subject here from nearly two years ago.

But product management is a function that is performed, at some level and degree, in most financial institutions. Even if they have no title Product Manager. But if you don't measure product profitability, I'm not certain what financial institutions are managing to.

The video below discusses how Product Managers can use profitability information to improve the profitability of products and ultimately their institution.

How do you do Product Management?

~ Jeff

Bankers: Is It Worth Buying Checking Accounts

At least somebody noticed. Noticed that I might be a valuable checking account customer. Aside from credit cards, I don't get much attention from bankers or financial advisors. Maybe the "do not call" list is more effective than I thought?

So when I opened my mailbox and received the bribe, I was interested. Interested to see how much a bank was willing to pay for my business. The answer: $300 (see picture). Thanks Santander! Or should I say, gracias! I should note that Santander has a branch in my town. Courtesy of their Sovereign Bank bailout, ummm… acquisition.

I've heard opinions on whether a community bank should buy checking accounts. Sure, the big banks seem to be on the bandwagon. Jeff For Banks readers likely get these offers. One bank controller opens accounts for all offers and gladly takes the cash. A community bank head of consumer lending recently told me he did the same with a Key Bank offer. Five hundred bucks! Key Bank values him more than mi banco values me.

Is It Worth It?

If you're a regular reader, you know me. And my philosophy that it all comes down to a spreadsheet. So I ran the numbers to see if offering me trescientos dolares was worth it to Santander. Below are the results.

The analysis is assumption driven. For example, I assumed that the annual marginal cost of my checking account to Santander was $100, which included items fees and per account fees charged by their items processor and core processor. A guess, of course. But one based on my experience and my own checking volume.

I also assumed the credit for funds, which is also the spread for a non-interest bearing account, which this offer was for, was the same spread as for all community banks that subscribe to my firm's profitability outsourcing service. The spread of 2.52%, taken from an FHLB yield curve, would be the equivalent of 5.75 years duration based on FHLB Boston's spot rates at the time of printing.

Sorry for the technical stuff, but my finance readers would want to know.

And 5.75 years seems like a reasonable duration for such an account. In other words, the bank thinks they can keep that account for that amount of time. Also, I used the average balance per account for my firm's profitability clients. You can calculate your own bank's average balance for similar accounts.

So, Is It Worth It?!

The above spreadsheet would indicate yes. But wait!

It does not include the cost of the campaign. And that cost must be spread over the number of accounts opened. So, if the campaign went to 50,000 households, with a 2% success rate, that would equate to 1,000 net new accounts. And I'd like my marketing friends to chip in, but 2% seems a stretch. 

If the campaign cost $50,000, and you opened 1,000 accounts, then it cost $50 in incremental cost per account. Still worth it. But if you solicited 10,000 households, and experienced a 1% success rate, you would only open 100 accounts. If that campaign, which sounds more realistic for a community bank, cost $25,000, then it would cost $250 per account, erasing the present value of all profits.

This is why, in my opinion, you see large banks doing larger campaigns to generate economies of scale in terms of fixed acquisition costs (cost of the campaign). And it is much less common in community banks, which do not enjoy the benefits of scale of campaign.

So, my answer is... it depends. But it is all about the math.

Does my math work for you?

~ Jeff

Are Bank Products Simple, Fair, and Transparent?

I was on a road trip discussing banking with a colleague, and I mentioned that bank products are anything but simple, fair, and transparent. He said, “sounds like a blog post.”

I have never heard a bank customer say, “gee, I wish my bank relationship was more complex.” Yet we charge business checking fees based on a complex analysis, offer a 7-month special CD only to roll it into a lower yielding 6-monther if the customer isn’t attentive, and require high-interest checking customers to have 10 debit transactions, e-statements, and a partridge in a pear tree to get that rate. Sound simpler, fairer, and more transparent?

On the other side of the coin, bank customers don’t necessarily understand what it takes to run their accounts profitably. Dear customer, the Federal government requires financial institutions to monitor your account for suspicious activity and report anything untoward. That costs time and resources that drive up the cost for your checking account. That is why every overdraft fee, interchange transaction, and minimum balance fee counts. Your government drives up bank costs.

It costs $423 per year for a bank to run a retail interest-bearing checking account, based on my firm’s product profitability database. To cover that cost solely on the spread that your balances generate would require an average balance of $21,363 in your account. All. The. Time.

I have written on these pages that I thought the past practices of relying on customers to be asleep at the switch and accept rates significantly different than market rates will soon be over. Banks must shift business models to pay depositors something closer to market rates for “accumulation accounts”, which are accounts for long-term savings such as an emergency money market account, or a CD ladder.

Cost of funds advantages should be built on having relatively higher “store of value” accounts such as checking, or special purpose savings where convenience and safety are more important to the customer than accumulation.

So I don’t point out a problem without proposing a solution, I have an idea for a Simpler, Fairer, and more Transparent small business banking deposit product. Call it the Jeff For Banks (JFB) Business Banker Account. As I mentioned in past posts, I’m a narcissist and I’m trying to get something named after me.

JFB Business Banker Account

The product is a combined store of value checking account, and an accumulation money market and/or sweep account. But no sweep here into a repo where we have to pledge investment securities against balances. That wouldn’t meet the simple test.

Banks can pay businesses interest on their checking accounts. So I propose banks segment business checking accounts by their resource utilization, and create minimum balances based on this segmentation. So the college bar that drops off bags of money each morning at the local branch has a higher threshold before it doesn’t get charged a monthly maintenance fee and receives interest.

So the average balance for high utilization quartile account might be $70,000, above which the account receives a competitive interest rate, and below which the account is charged a monthly maintenance fee. Here is what the math might look like for Pete’s Corner Bar.

JFB Business Banker Account Profitability Estimates
1	Average Balance	$92,102
2	Checking Average Balance	70,000
3	Checking FTP Spread*	1,463
4	Money Market Average Balance	22,102
5	Money Market FTP Spread*	197
6	Total Account Spread	$1,660
7	Fees**	$540
8	Annualized Operating Cost per Account*	$784
9	Pre-tax Profit	$1,416
10	Pre-tax ROA	1.54%
11	Equity Allocation*	1.00%
12	Pre-tax ROE	154%
13	Total Account Cost of Funds***	0.30%
*Per TKG product profitability peer data
**Assumes one incoming/outgoing wire/month
***Money market balance * 1.25%

The bank would still charge per use fees for things like wires, ACH’s, overdrafts. And receive interchange income. But the spread should cover items presented plus profit for the bank. Imagine having 10,000 of the JFB’s Business Banker Account. Instead of 1,000 of this account, 2,000 of that account, 4,000 of another account, and 3,000 old grandfathered accounts. Which would be easier for your branch and business bankers to explain to your customers? And marketing people tell me that bankers sell what they know.

Does the JFB Business Banker account pass the Simple, Fair, and Transparent test?

~ Jeff

Bankers: Ask What Customers Want. Then Do That.

Steve Jobs showed customers what he thought they would want, and convinced them that they wanted it. An unlikely scenario for bank products, wouldn’t you agree?

So what do your customers want?

This presumes you know who your target customers are. Bankers used to try and be everything banking to everyone in the towns where they had branches. This approach left the legacy of the General Bank. Where the answer to the question on what your bank is known for was “nothing in particular”. Or the most common bromide, “superior service”. We’re still either stuck on this legacy or are shedding it at tortoise pace.

Identifying your target customers does not mean you will not serve others. But who do you want your front line people focused on? What processes do you want to streamline first in your support functions to provide superior service? What technologies do you want implemented right away?

The answer to the above should be based on your strategy. And your strategy should be based on target customers. And target customers should provide sufficient quantity, growth, and margins to serve and meet your desired profitability. 

Next question… what do these customers want? 

Take SoFi as an example. Their desired customers are millennials with college degrees that typically result in higher paying jobs. Pretty specific. They started their company refinancing student loans, because their target audience was graduating college, and many of them with high impact degrees such as lawyers or accountants had mountains of student loans.

As their target audience ages, they are moving on to other financial needs, such as car loans and mortgages. In fact, SoFi applied for an industrial loan bank charter to offer banking services to their target customers. They later withdrew because their CEO left. But still, here is a company focused on their target customers and were building the lineup of products they demanded.

How about you? If your audience is small businesses, do you offer the lineup of products they want? Bankers frequently impose limits on their product set based on what they want to put on their balance sheet. Must this be so?

I marvel at the ROE of the New York City loan broker. Many if not most loans (other than the very large ones) in NYC are handled by loan brokers. They match borrowers and lenders. For a fee. Like 1.25% of the loan balance. So a $3 million loan deal, chump change in NYC, yields a $37,500 fee for a guy/gal that has a storefront in Astoria, Queens. 

Back to the small business. What if they want early stage funding and that type of lending doesn’t fit your bank’s risk appetite? Why can’t you broker it and match them with a partner that does? There are partnerships you can forge with non-competitors to meet this customer demand. It’s not like you haven’t done this before. How about SBA lending, or merchant services? You likely partner with someone to provide these services.

Why not identify all of the financial products and services your target customer segment demands. And figure out how to offer it.

Or, you could send them somewhere else.

How do you meet the financial needs of your target customers?

~ Jeff


Note: This is my last post of 2017. I want to let all of my readers know that I appreciate your readership and comments. Thank you! And have a safe New Year celebration and a blessed 2018!

Checking Analysis: The Betamax of Bank Products

Don't think about how it is. Think about how it should be.

Now apply this philosophy to business checking. If we did, would we continue to offer Analysis Checking or some variation of it? 

Yet we do. Even though the Dodd-Frank Act eliminated Reg Q, that pesky reg that did not allow banks to pay interest on business demand deposits. Because of Reg Q, in place for over 80 years, banks created Business Analysis Checking, where a business earns credits to offset fees based on their balances. See a Union Bank of Richmond, VA description of a typical Business Analysis Checking account. 

But it doesn't stop at the checking account. Businesses want to earn interest on their excess funds. So they determine how much to leave in their non-interest bearing, analysis checking, and then sweep the excess to some interest bearing vehicle, such as a money market account, or, gasp, a repo because prior to the financial crisis deposit insurance only extended to the first $100,000 of a business's deposits. Repo's are generally collateralized. So there is all sorts of complications going on to run a checking account and to pay business interest on guaranteed funds.

Does it have to be?

I say no. And because highlighting a problem without proposing a solution is whining, I propose the JFB Alternative to Business Checking Analysis. Or the JFB Business Banking Cash Maximizer. 

My firm measures product profitability on an outsourced basis for dozens of community financial institutions. As a result of this line of business, we are able to see product spreads, fees, and costs. And by costs, we measure the average organizational resources to originate and maintain a business checking account. The average for all of the banks in our profitability universe was $590.50 in operating expense per year.

We also calculate the spread using coterminous funds transfer pricing (FTP), and the actual fees assessed to those accounts. That combination of spread and fees was 2.14% of balances during the second quarter 2017.

Knowing the operating cost per account, and revenue generated as a percent of balances, you can calculate the average balance needed to be maintained to cover the account's costs. Said another way, it's breakeven balance. See the table.

Based on the average operating cost per account, and revenue as a percent of balances, the average account holder would need to maintain an average balance of $27,593.46 to cover the bank's costs.

Hold on though. Nobody is average, right? Our universe of business checking customers vary on their account utilization. Some are high cash businesses, that frequently make a night drop of deposits requiring our tellers to validate and make the deposits. Others are no cash, and use our RDC machines to deposit a relatively small amount of checks.

You see that I divided account types into quintiles to make this distinction. What this requires is a way that your core system can put a code to determine which quintile each account belongs. I believe this can be accomplished by the oft-cited with few practical installations... Artificial Intelligence, or AI.

Your core tracks transaction types per account. Each transaction type uses a certain amount of bank resources. You don't have to come up with a dollar amount, highly contrived by the way, of each transaction. Such as an ACH costs the bank $18.65. But what you can do is say that in terms of resource utilization, an ACH takes 2x the resources used by an RDC deposit. So, for example, an ACH might have an 8 on a scale of 1-10 for resource utilization, and an RDC might be a 4.

By scoring transactions by resources used, you can then divide your business checking customers into the above quintiles, and assign a cost per account accordingly. The aggregate dollars it takes your bank to originate and maintain business checking accounts remains the same, at $2.975 million. But the cost per account is broken up by resource utilization.

So the one-person law firm that RDC deposits 20 checks per month might be designated a Low Activity quintile, and be assessed a $354.30 operating cost. While the cash-driven marijuana shop that drops off loads of cash over the teller line each day, would be rightly assessed $826.70.

Now you have the means to determine the minimum average balance to cover costs. Anything over that amount, is paid interest. No sweep. No analysis, at least not in the past use of the word. No multiple statements. And no human intervention.

Just an easy account to explain to your client. And an easy one for your client to manage.

Let's send Business Checking Analysis to the Betamax pile of history.

Are any of my readers doing this?


~ Jeff

Bank Products: Blah Blah Blah

At a recent banking conference, Ray Davis of Umpqua Bank took center stage to tell of his journey from a small, Oregon community bank to a regional powerhouse. He mentioned products only briefly. And product was not part of the bank's success. I thought, Why?

Stuck on the topic, I jotted down the products that I remembered from when I landed my first banking job in 1985 while Davis spoke. I never claimed to have a great attention span. And I used those hotel notepads. Someone has to use them. Here was my list:

Products Circa 1985

Mortgage loan

Car loan

Personal loan

Home equity loan (?)

Business loan and line of credit

Commercial mortgage loan

Construction Loan

Checking account (business and personal)

Savings account (business and personal)

Certificate of deposit (business and personal)

Merchant services (?)

Trust

Then I wrote down how that list has changed.

New Products: Circa Today

Money market accounts (although could be classified as hyped savings)

Investments

Sweep accounts/cash management

Hedging

Options

The hedging and options might be categorized as features of business loans, versus products in and of themselves. But let's not quibble over insignificance.

What do you notice about the above lists?

What I notice is there is little difference in the products of today and the products when MacGyver developed improvised explosive devices with his shoes.

Bank products, at their base, have not changed. So, perhaps, instead of developing complexity in our product set, we should look to develop simplicity. Wouldn't we all benefit from more simplicity?

What sparked this post was a recent article in ababankmarketing.com written by Mark Gibson and Kevin Halsey of Capital Performance Group in Washington DC. It was a precursor to a presentation they gave at the ABA Marketing Conference in New Orleans titled "How to Build Remarkable Products". One of their slides from that presentation is below.

This slide, and another I was privileged to see, dubbed as one of the most popular by the authors, speaks nothing of product. In fact, I will confess to you that when I hear bankers talk about products, product management, product design, etc., I have no idea what they are talking about. Bank products have been the same since I've been in banking.

Yes, there are different features to products, such as high interest rates for checking account customers that engage in specific behaviors, or option-based CD's as developed by Neil Stanley of The CorePoint. Still a checking account. And still a CD.

Distribution is different. Back to my notepad, I penned the 1985 distro points as person-person, in-branch, telephone, and ATM. Today we could add online, mobile, and social (for customer service). As a list, not very impressive.

However, in terms of customer utilization, distribution has been massively disrupted.

Sure, bankers can tick off all of the new features added to that standard product list, as mentioned above. But new products? Hardly.

So why not simplify? Like Southwest did when they went with one airplane model. Why not have a personal checking account, that is non-interest bearing up to a certain average balance, which could differ based on customer utilization that could easily by solved by AI, and bears interest above that level. Same with business checking, now that we can pay interest on those accounts. 

Savings accounts could easily have sub-accounts. Like the proverbial envelopes in the night stand drawer that tucks money away for certain things such as Emergency, Vacation, and Holiday. I believe PNC did this with the Virtual Wallet account. To me, Virtual Wallet is nothing more than a practically thought out savings account. 

I recently commented to a bank's strategy team that I thought the days when bankers could rely on sleepy money are coming to an end. The 13-month CD special trick, where the CD reprices at the lower 12-month CD when it matures, is over. A business model that relies on the stupidity of your customers will die. Imagine a customer getting a text from a financial management app that says "your bank is screwing you". It may not say that, but it would say that a CD is maturing and the rate it will role into is below market.

No, we can no longer rely on sleepy money. But perhaps we should focus Marketing on touching the customer in every phase of the buying journey instead of concocting schemes to complicate products, tinker with pricing, and rely on Rip Van Winkle customers. This is what I believe my friends at Capital Performance Group were emphasizing.

If I were a marketer, I would focus on simplicity in product design. And sophistication in the customer acquisition or relationship expansion funnel.

But I'm not a marketer. 

~ Jeff

Cultural Conversation in Banking

Are your incentives consistent with your strategy and culture?

I was recently interviewed by the Financial Managers Society on this topic, and as a lead-up to my presentation on the subject at the upcoming FMS Forum in Las Vegas in June.

Here are excerpts from the discussion.

FMS: Why is measuring account openings such a misguided endeavor?

JM: If a bank measures product profitability, costs follow activity. Those that don't measure product profitability intuitively tend to believe that the number of accounts drives the work more than balances, even though balances, for the most part, drive revenue in banking.

So if customer A comes in with $10,000, an accounts-driven institution would try to split up that $10,000 between two or three accounts so they can hit their targets. The profit-focused bank, on the other hand, would do what the customer originally intended, and open up that checking account knowing full well that they would get similar or equal spread on the $10,000 in the single checking account, but have less back-office expenses to absorb than if they opened three accounts.

FMS: Which numbers should matter in the quest for better profitability - and why?

JM: Co-terminous spread and direct pre-tax profit - and the trends for both - would create an environment to drive profitability rather than activity. Bankers typically hold lenders accountable for the size of their portfolio and their production. What if they were instead held accountable for the spread (after provision), both in dollar aggregate and the ratio, and the trend for each?

So if Lender A had a $50 million portfolio at a 1.25% co-terminous spread, or $625,000, would that be better than the lender with a $35 million portfolio, with a 2% co-terminous spread? The math says no. But who reaps more reward in today's environment?

FMS: Bigger picture, how can the right incentives lead to a better culture?

JM: We look for the path of least resistance in terms of meeting goals and incentives - it's human nature. If I'm a branch manager whose incentive kicks in if I grow branch deposits by 10%, then I'm looking to do that with the least resistance. So I might call my regional manager daily for CD rate exceptions to get that $200,000 CD, even though with the rate exception, that CD might have a five-basis-point spread.

On the other hand, if I was held accountable for growing my branch's co-terminous deposit spread, would I still chase the CD customer? Or would I maybe seek the operating account at the tire and battery shop down the street, even though that might bring 25% of that CD balance to my branch? Multiply that logic to every profit center within the bank. Now you have a culture!

Banking Economies of Scale Revisited

In 2011, on these pages, I wrote my most read blog post ever, titled: Does your bank achieve positive operating leverage? Even today, nearly six years later, it receives a material amount of views. Particularly from larger financial institutions.

Economies of scale has eluded our industry in its purist form. For some time, banks between $1B and $10B in total assets tend to wring out the best expense ratios (operating expense/average assets) and efficiency ratios. So economies of scale hucksters walk with this chink in their armor as to why their story-line falters at a certain size.

I also noted in my most recent and in all of my past Top 5 total return posts that community banks deliver superior returns to their larger brethren. So, although there are plenty of consultants and investment bankers with pitch books telling you to get bigger, there are also contrarians such as myself that believe that bigger is not always better. And my pitch book is simply a bunch of spreadsheets. No fancy bubble charts, green light/red light tables, or tombstones. 

In this post I would like to revisit a couple of tables. First, I broke down all commercial banks by asset size to show expense and efficiency ratios as banks became larger. The results are below.

As the table suggests, financial institutions of all sizes reduced their relative operating expenses since 2011, with the only blip being a slight expense ratio increase in the $500MM-$1B commercial bank category. I should note that the efficiency ratio from that sized bank actually went down between 2011-16, suggesting a slightly better net interest margin.

The economies of scale argument clearly has merit, as you can see from the table. As asset sizes increase, expense and efficiency ratios tend to decrease. With that pesky exception of financial institutions between $5B-$10B in assets. These are averages. So there are exceptions. And I have often spoken about there being a significant number of exceptions to the economies of scale bromide. 

One example is German American Bank, highlighted in American Banker's Community Banker of the Year issue, and on this blog. It is a $3B bank with a 55% efficiency ratio. Open Bank in Los Angeles is a $722 million bank with a 58% efficiency ratio. I didn't have to research small efficient banks. They rolled off my tongue. Actually, my fingertips.

The below table was taken from my firm's profitability outsourcing database. We do the cost accounting for dozens of financial institutions that includes calculating operating cost per product account. Did costs go down at this granular level as assets grew?

Obviously, no. But why? If assets grew, and the bankwide expense and efficiency ratio has generally declined as banks grew, how did these costs go up? It is a fully absorbed cost system, so all costs within the bank are allocated to products and services.

My theory is this. Average balances per account have been growing since the low end of the yield curve has hovered near zero, and today is below 1%. The cost to originate and maintain a $100,000 money market account is nearly identical to originating and maintaining a $50,000 money market account. The growing average balance per account phenomenon has been occurring in most bank products. So, bankwide, costs would appear to go down because denominators, average assets in the expense ratio and total revenue in the efficiency ratio, are going up with the average balance per account.

Number of accounts, however, have not been increasing at nearly the same pace as the balance sheet, if at all. So all of those resources at your financial institution designed to grow new account relationships have not been efficiently utilized. 

In other words, in account originations, financial institutions are generally, and on average, over capacity. 

Financial institutions have tried to reduce this capacity in branches by consolidation and staff reduction. That is why you don't see material increases in cost per account in deposit categories. 

But either through expense reduction or new account acquisition, there is more left to do.

Should Bankers Pursue an Asset Driven or Core Funded Strategy?

My firm is 15 years old. And approximately every five years, we performed an analysis to determine how the stock market rewards financial institutions for different strategies. In particular, does the market reward banks that drive net interest margin through a high yield on earning assets, or a low cost of funds?

The first two times we did this, the low cost of funds banks won, hands down. So I assumed that this is the way it was, and therefore is the way it will be. But we recently revisited the analysis for an "asset-driven" client... i.e. one that focuses on loan production, and backfills with funding as they figure out how to pay for the loan pipeline. This strategy typically leads to a higher cost of funds as the bank turns to higher rate deposits, brokered deposits, or FHLB borrowings because it's quicker than winning deposit relationships.

The following charts show the results. Sorry for column overrun but wanted to make them bigger and I have no idea how to do that other than blowing them up. I digress. Fortunately, I have two daughters and am very familiar with being told I'm wrong. If not for my two angels, the below charts might have broken my confidence. 

The charts show the price/tangible book and price/earnings multiples of two sets of banks. As the Criteria states, we took banks with between $800MM and $3.0B in total assets with healthy net interest margins and profitability. The size range is consistent with our bank client. We then divided the result into the top 10 yield on earning assets banks, and the top 10 (lowest) cost of funds banks. And then charted their trading multiple trends. Yes, there were two cross-over banks that made both charts. Quite an accomplishment, in my opinion.

The low cost of funds banks are no longer the clear winner, as the yield on earning assets banks sport a greater price/tangible book multiples. 

Mind=blown.

What caused the shift that improved asset driven banks trading multiples to be comparable to core funded banks? I have my opinions. Note the next chart.

Yeah, I know. Charts again from Marsico. Hey, I'm a strategy-finance wonk.

My firm measures the profitability of products for dozens of community financial institutions. As part of that service, we roll up bank specific products to common products so we can compare each client's product profitability to that of a peer group. Think home equity and commercial real estate loans, business checking and personal money market accounts, etc. 

As a result, we can determine the spreads (using actual yields for assets and costs for funding offset by a funds transfer price) of all products on the asset and liability sides of the balance sheet. The trend of those spreads are in the chart. Notice in 2006, when the Fed Funds rate stood at 5.25%, and the yield curve was inverted, liability spreads exceeded asset spreads.

Then the Fed started dropping short term rates (quickly to 0-25 bps) and the yield curve went positively sloped. Loan spreads quickly exceeded deposit spreads. And loan profitability followed in quick succession. 

So for an extended period of time that includes present day, loan spreads exceed deposit spreads, and loan profitability has mostly exceeded deposit profitability.

Therefore, asset driven banks were rewarded with greater overall profitability than core funded banks, and trading multiples moved to greater parity.

But it won't always be so. 

I thought you would like to know.

~ Jeff