As Plansmith’s ‘budgeting software’ evolved from its onset in the early 1970s, it became referred to as a ‘profit planning model.’ This distinction was made because it was much more than just balances on a spreadsheet or basic historical trends cast forward for the next year.
Do you have appropriate policy limits for all key interest rate risk measurements? How did you set your set them, and do they really still make sense for your institution?
When market rates weren’t changing, most institutions were in general compliance with policy limits. However, with the steady ramp up of rates through mid-2019, and then the massive drop in March of 2020, we’ve seen numerous financial institutions fall out of policy compliance. We’ve also heard from many of our clients that just aren’t sure what they should use for limits for the various non-parallel rate shock scenarios and now emphasized net income shock measurements. The old industry standard limits that so many institutions are still using just don’t seem to be working anymore.
Banking, like Yogi, is a unique bear. If you haven’t worked in the trenches, you probably just don’t understand it. It’s an industry best served by those who have lived it.
As unique as the industry is – you guessed it – your budgeting solution should be just as unique.
Given the historic low U.S Treasury rate environment and the recent 150 basis point near-immediate drop in rates, we’re expecting an increased regulatory focus on interest rate risk (IRR) and liquidity management.
It’s no doubt that financial institutions will see pressure to not only reforecast their 2020 budgets, but also to run future IRR shocks and more custom “what-if” scenarios as part of their regular IRR modeling program. Liquidity management and stressed-scenario cash flow modeling are also more important now than ever.
For the past ten years or so, surge deposits have been a material issue in asset/liability management. At the time of, and following the 2007-2009 Great Recession, the banking industry saw a substantial influx of deposits as real estate and equity investors liquidated positions and sought safe places to store their money and ride out the storm. The impact of this flight to safety was compounded by Government sponsored initiatives such as the Transaction Account Guarantee (TAG) Program and increases in Federal deposit insurance levels.
As a result, banks experienced significant deposit growth, and while these surge deposits would have normally been seen as a good thing, the near evaporation of loan demand left many banks with far more deposit dollars than they could effectively put to use. In turn, market liquidity levels skyrocketed, but margins were compressed. For the purpose of this article, we’ll refer to these funds moving from real estate, equities, or any other investments into the banking system as Type I Surge Deposits.