If you are a parent, you use "what if" scenarios every day with your child. What if you get lost? What if you saved your allowance rather than spend it? What if your friends ask you to…? What if you study for that test? What if a stranger offers you a ride?
I would like to extend a sincere thank you to all of our clients and prospective clients that stopped by the Plansmith booth and took a few minutes to talk with me and my colleague, Ron Trice. In an era of endless emails, conference calls and web presentations it is always nice to put a face to a name and shake hands with all of you. If you didn’t come by the booth but happened to see the two tall guys in the loudest most obnoxious Hawaiian shirts ever - yes, that was us.
Last week we covered the first half of the OCC letter requesting information from client banks on their interest rate risk (IRR) model. Along with the letter, you may have run across some forms to be filled in with results from your model. This post and the accompanying webinar are meant to clarify the letter and terminology. Separately, but related, we have produced a video and guide for completing the OCC EV IRR Data Form for Financial Compass Clients (to be released soon).
A new request list and questionnaire from the OCC is making its way around the banking community and the NCUA has issued one of its own. Regardless of who you answer to, expect more scrutiny on your asset liability management (ALM) model. For some of you this might be "old hat", but we’ve fielded calls by clients asking for interpretation of the IRR Data Collection. So, Plansmitties, and even non-Smitties, take note: there is a letter with your name on it and we’re here to help.
This past year, I sent my oldest off to college for the first time. Amid the tears (ours) and shouts of joy (hers) there was much hard work, paperwork and check writing involved to get her to this point. And while we want her to celebrate what she has already accomplished, we also want her to focus on the details needed to get her to the next milestone - College Graduation. Fortunately, she does have a mandatory Strategy 101 class that – among other things - requires her to map out her course schedule for the next four years. The focus is not to create a roadmap that she should not deviate from, but rather to get her thinking about how to build in nice-to-haves (study abroad), plan for some "what-ifs" (change of interests), and to regularly check back in to see if she is staying on course or needs to alter her path.
I’m compelled to relate planning to everyday activity – after all, just because we are bankers, doesn’t mean we don’t experience life’s little pleasures (or displeasures) any more than, say, your average commuter. Today, while legally stopped in a left turn lane, waiting for traffic to clear before proceeding to Plansmith’s office, a man honked and gesticulated wildly because I didn’t pull into the intersection and ready myself for the turn. Never mind I couldn’t make the turn anyway. Conclusion: he didn’t plan well. If he was in a hurry, he should have planned to leave earlier, thereby beating me to the turn light where he, too, would sit and wait for traffic to clear. Maybe he took a different route from home, or maybe I did, causing this situation (I did stop at the dry cleaners – HA! solved).