Plansmith Blog

Forgotten Components of Interest Rate Risk at Community Banks

Posted by Craig Hartman on 9/26/17 6:30 PM
It is standard operating procedure for community banks to measure interest rate risk by shocking the balance sheet. The percentage change in the Net Interest Margin over several shock levels as an indicator of the severity of risk. While it can provide a clue to the potential loss in the margin, it by no means measures the true risk. The true risk is Equity loss. Equity doesn’t come from NIM but from retained earnings. So to truly measure risk to equity, we must use the entire P&L, not just net interest income.
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The Community Bank Strategic Planning Experiment: Using Your Model To Prepare for Rising Interest Rates

Posted by Sue West on 5/10/17 10:00 AM
Q: What makes an experiment successful?

A: Its failures.

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Surge Deposits: 3 Regulatory Expectations

Posted by Dave Wicklund on 2/1/17 8:01 AM

In the last 5-10 years, there's been a lot of growth in DDA, NOW, MMDA, and savings accounts. These deposits can provide a great low-cost funding base, but they can also draw attention at your next exam.

Examiners are looking closely at these surge deposit balances. Specifically, they're looking to see if you've considered surge deposits in 3 ways.

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Answered: Bankers' 5 Most Painful Questions about Backtesting

Posted by Dave Wicklund on 1/23/17 8:18 AM

Backtesting can be a painful topic for bankers. In this post, I'll answer the top 5 most common questions I hear about backtesting. I'll reference my first post, Independent Review, Model Validation, and Backtesting: Same Thing, Only Different, so you might want to revisit it before reading on. In that blog, we looked at the interrelationship of these three items and brought up a few questions on backtesting.

Specifically, we questioned 5 things: who should do it, how often should it be done, what period should be covered, do you need to backtest model results and assumptions, and why even bother if market rates really aren’t changing.

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5 Tools Everyone In The Banking Industry Should Be Using

Posted by Megan Plis on 11/16/16 11:32 AM

You see some people using them, and they're working great. Why isn't everybody already on board? Maybe the tools are brand new. Perhaps they're too expensive. Who knows, they might be really exclusive.

Except, most of the time, they're not. So, what keeps people from getting their hands on the best time-saving tools in the banking industry?

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4 Parts of an Effective Interest Rate Risk Management Program

Posted by Dave Wicklund on 10/12/16 8:07 AM

It's tough out there for banks. With so much competition from other financial institutions and new technologies, not to mention increased government regulation, it's no wonder some bankers feel overwhelmed. One of the hot topics of regulation at the moment is interest rate risk, and examiners want to know how the bank is poised to handle it. What does this come down to? It comes down to a process for handling interest rate risk, or an Interest Rate Risk Management Program.

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Community Banks: Fun with Funds Transfer Pricing, Part II

Posted by Tom Parsons on 3/23/16 12:00 PM

In the previous post we explored the concept of funds transfer pricing (FTP), but only on the surface level. Now for the good stuff: how should the FTP rate be assigned? Well, in a number of ways from the simple to the complex. Like a lot of things in life, simple means fast, easy, less data, good enough; whereas complex requires lots of patience and data for a little more accuracy.

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Community Banks: The Indiana Jones Sword vs. Gun Theory

Posted by Tom Parsons on 12/1/15 12:30 PM

"In the 1981 film, "Raiders of the Lost Ark", one particular scene consistently brings the house down: Indiana Jones, having survived an elaborate chase through a casbah, is confronted by a swordsman whipping through a flashy routine with a scimitar. Indy initially squares off against the deadly swordsman bearing only his trademark whip in his hands; then with a look of infinite fatigue and disgust, he casually pulls out his revolver and blows the bad guy away." (Credit for text: Snopes.com)

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Community Banks: Fun with Funds Transfer Pricing, Part I

Posted by Tom Parsons on 10/13/15 3:00 PM

Yep, the 90s. It was all the rage and I jumped on board like a millennial on the Grateful Dead Fare Thee Well scene – I’m not sure what it’s all about, but I want to say I was there.
 

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Five Pillars of a Productive Community Bank Planning Process

Posted by Craig Hartman on 8/25/15 2:30 PM

Plansmith has been building financial planning software for community banks for over 45 years. More than just coding keystrokes and calculations, though, we understand the real process of planning and build systems that seamlessly integrate into that process.

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