While bankers have rightly started to change the industry’s image from being old and stodgy to being hipper, we caution against swerving into dork-dom. The other day we were in a meeting where a banker started “raising the roof” with the double open hand pumping gesture over his head because of getting a loan approved. Unless you are working with Habitat for Humanity, no roofs should ever be raised in banking.
In case you didn't get it...
This is one of the more common fraud pattern for small dollar loans that was highlighted by Clarity at nonPrime101 but one that all account officers should be on the look out for. Note the opening and closing of multiple accounts and the cell phone number change.
Given that rates are poised to move up in 2014, this could negatively impact commercial real estate (“CRE”) loan quality. Fortunately, rising rates create some offsetting forces that could help or hurt underwritten CRE loans. The net impact of these multiple forces is why bankers get paid the big bucks to take the risk. To better understand these forces, we break this down into a quick interest rate risk primer for commercial real estate that we believe every lender should know.
In case you missed it, Chipotle’s already expensive burrito is going up in price again starting in January. What is going on? Are margin’s shrinking, costs going up? The answer to Chipotle's pricing power lies in the strength of their brand and it is a good lesson for banks.
We understand that there is a fine line between spam and marketing. However, banks dramatically underutilize email marketing to drive business. We highlighted a case study not too long ago where a couple simple reminders can help boost deposit balances and improve profitability.
A couple weeks ago we discussed Part I of the best tactics we learned for building a bank customer base over the holiday season. Traditionally, while the holiday season is one of the worst times to market, this campaign is designed to take advantage of bank customer behavior and put the odds back in your favor. Since growth is so difficult to come by these days, we are looking for every advantage we can get and this campaign starts the year off with forward momentum.
