Plansmith Blog

“Where is someone that will pay me 1.5X book?; that’s what my Interest Rate Risk model says my bank is worth.” That statement, along with “there is no way this bank could be sold for 1.5X book”, are two comments I’ve heard a few too many times lately from bankers and examiners. While I will let you figure out which group is responsible for each statement, both illustrate a somewhat common misconception that capital values (sometimes called “market value of equity”) from interest rate risk models are meant to reflect actual current and projected institution sales prices. 

So if you’re reading this, my second ever blog post, you’ve probably already seen the first one entitled "Independent Review, Model Validation, and Backtesting: Same Thing, Only Different." In that piece, we looked at the interrelationship of these three items and brought up a few questions on backtesting. Specifically, we questioned 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.

In our ever increasing efforts to educate and inform, our marketing department here at team Plansmith has been on me to contribute to our Blog. Quite frankly, I’m not really a "blog" guy, but for those of you that know me, I’m not short on opinions either. So, given that I sit here stuck on a plane for a few hours, this seems like a good time to take a shot at it.