"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)
I’ll be honest, I was never a Twitter fan. I always thought, “I don’t have the time to sit on Twitter all day and read every single thing someone has to say in under 140 characters.”But then…I became a believer.
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.
“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.
Five Pillars of a Productive Community Bank Planning Process
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.
Community Bank Planning is a Collaborative Activity, Part 2
In the last post, we discussed the responsibilities and planning software opportunities of the Asset Liability Committee (ALCO), Investments/Funds Management, and the CFO. This post will address the role of the Community Bank's Branch/Department Managers, the Marketing Department, and the CEO/The Board.
Who in your community bank should be using planning specialty software? Accounting, the Board, the ALCO? You might be surprised as to how many various areas/departments and their respective managers should actively use and benefit from an automated planning system.
What are the various functional areas and departments that should be actively involved in planning at your community bank?
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." - Confucius
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.
Margin risk tolerance calculates the minimum net interest income and net interest margin necessary to maintain continuing operations. Minimum margin consists of two basic components: 1) earnings needed to maintain an acceptable capital ratio and pay dividends, and 2) earnings needed for overhead.