Category: Bank Director Education

Posted on

In the Face of Intense Competition

Financial institutions face intense competition from non-banks like PayPal, American Express, Walmart and Quicken Loans…  and a rapidly changing demographic that demands new approaches to attract and retain customers (be it individual or business).  Today’s post takes a look at two financial technology companies working to keep banks relevant as customers increasingly expect a“one stop shop” in all areas of their lives.

American-Flag-Wallpaper-Phone

Over on FiveThirtyEight.com

On FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s newly launched website at ESPN, the editorial team leverages statistical analysis to tell compelling stories about politics, science and yes, sports.  While much digital ink has been spilled on this week’s NFL draft,  the site’s chief economics writer, Ben Casselman, authored a piece that caught my eye.  Thanks to a keynote presentation by Fox News’ Juan Williams at this January’s Acquire or Be Acquired conference, I’m far more aware of the changing demographics of the United States — and what that means for financial institutions.

 

Based on my conversations with Juan in the desert, I found early inspiration for today’s piece while pouring over Ben’s What Baby Boomers’ Retirement Means For the U.S. Economy.  In combination with economic shifts — both domestically and globally — it is clear that changing demographics are transforming businesses.  As we trend towards a younger populace, Ben writes “all else equal, fewer workers means less economic growth… If more of the population is young or old that leaves fewer working-age people to support them and contribute to the economy.”  Clearly, banks need to be prepared to serve a population that will live longer.  Maybe more importantly, they need to court their most valuable customers — Gen X&Y and Millennials (relationships built, “gulp” through online & mobile experiences).

Putting Checks into the Cloud

In the world of checks, VerifyValid acknowledges that “paper is simply a vessel for holding information. The real check is the data fields it contains: the check number, the amount, the routing number, the recipient, and most important of all, the authorizing action which says that the account holder agrees to pay the stated amount to the payee.”  I had a chance to see Paul Doyle, the company’s Founder & CEO, inspire a crowd of CEOs and board members at The Growth Conference last week.  Flying home from New Orleans, I spent some time learning how the company overcame the challenge in providing this information electronically in such a way that prevents fraud.  As I see it, VerifyValid lowers an organization’s costs while increasing efficiency and financial security with every payment.  IMHO, their 2 minute, 25 second video is worth a watch.

Making Money Simple, Attractive and Intelligent

Located “in the heart of Utah’s Silicon Slopes,” MoneyDesktop is redefining the way millions of people interact with their finances.  As one of the fastest-growing financial technology providers, MoneyDesktop positions banks and credit unions as the financial hub of their account holders — think Mint on steroids — with its personal financial management, data-driven analytics and marketing technologies.  Some 450 financial institutions rely on this software-as-a-service vendor… and I saw last night they have plans to grow significantly in the months to come.  They write, and I agree, that account holders are changing.  “There is an ongoing shift away from traditional brick & mortar banking (and) technology is providing better ways for account holders to interact with their money, and with financial institutions.”  An interesting company delivering a very clean and user-friendly experience.

Aloha Friday!

Posted on

The Single Greatest Constraint on Growth

With the revenue pressures facing the banking industry being some of the most intense in decades, banks need to think more constructively about their businesses. At the same time, changing consumer behavior could drive the industry to reallocate its resources to less traditional growth channels in order to stay ahead.  In my view, the words of an English naturalist reflect the single greatest constraint on growth today.

photo-6

Powerful Forces

One of our long-term corporate sponsors, PwC, recently shared their thoughts on the future of the retail banking industry.  In their view, “powerful forces are reshaping the banking industry, creating an imperative for change. Banks need to choose what posture they want to adopt – to lead the change, to follow fast, or to manage for the present. Whatever their chosen strategy, leading banks will need to balance execution against… critical priorities and have a clear sense of the posture they wish to adopt.”  If you, like our friends from PwC, are joining us in New Orleans later this week to dive into this very topic, their compelling “Retail Banking 2020” report might make for good airplane company.

Looking Back in Order to Look Ahead

Last year, John Eggemeyer, a Founder and Managing Principal of Castle Creek Capital LLC, helped me to kick off our inaugural Growth Conference.  As a lead investor in the banking industry since 1990, he shared his views on our “mature industry,” That is, banking follows a historic pattern of other mature industries: excess capacity creates fierce competition for business which in turn makes price, not customer service, the key differentiator.  While offering myriad thoughts on what makes for a great bank,  John did share some hard-to-swallow statistics and opinions for a crowd of nearly 200 bankers and industry executives:

  • Publicly traded banks from $1 billion to $5 billion in assets saw their stock values rise at about half the rate of the broader market as a whole since early 2009.
  • Of the 300 or so publicly traded banks in that size range, only about 60 of them traded at their pre-recession price multiples.
  • In the last 40 years, bank stocks always followed the same pattern in a recession: falling in value quicker than the rest of the market and recovering quicker.

I share these three points to provide context for certain presentations later this week.  Some build on his perspectives while others update market trends and behavior.  Still, an interesting reminder of where we were at this time last year.

Getting Social-er

Yesterday, I shared the hashtag for The Growth Conference (#BDGrow14).  Thanks to our Director of Research — @ehmccormick — and Director of Marketing — @Michelle_M_King — I can tell you that nearly 30% of the attending banks have an active twitter account; 78% of sponsors do.  On the banking side, these include the oldest and largest institution headquartered in Louisiana — @IBERIABANK, a Connecticut bank first chartered in 1825 with over $3.5 billion in assets — @LibertyBank_CT and a Durham, NC-based bank that just went public last month — @Square1Bank.  On the corporate side of things, one of the top marketing and communications firms for financial companies —@wmagency, a tech company that shares Bank Director’s love of orange — @Fiserv and a leading provider of personal financial management — @MoneyDesktop join us.  Just six of many institutions and service providers I’m looking forward to saying hello to.

##

More to come — from New Orleans, not D.C. — tomorrow afternoon.

Posted on

Its Growth Week

Its finally here… “Growth Week” at Bank Director.  Yes Discovery Channel, you can keep your shark week.  What we’re about to get into is far more interesting (at least, to some): what’s working in banking today.  Most of our team heads down to the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans tomorrow and Wednesday for our 2014 Growth Conference.  Before they do, the first of five posts dedicated to building a business.

Growth-Key-Card-1

Think Distinct

Innovation means doing things differently.  Not just offering new products or offerings — but doing things differently across the entire business model.  Going into this event, I know many believe there are simply too many banks offering similar products and services.  I tend to think institutions are challenged when it comes to being distinctive compared with the competitor across the street.  This is not a new issue; however, there are more and more strategies emerging and enablers coming to market that can drive brand value, customer satisfaction and profitable growth.  Case-in-point: the work of our friends at StrategyCorps, whose idea is “be bold… go beyond basic mobile banking.”  One of the sponsors of the conference, I am excited to hear how  financial institutions, like First Financial, benefit from their mobile & online consumer checking solutions in order to enhance customer engagement and increase fee income.

Looking Back in Order to Look Ahead

While easy to frame the dynamics of our industry in terms of asset size, competing for business today is more of a “smart vs. not-so-smart” story than a “big vs. small.” During one of my favorite sessions last year — David AND Goliath — Peter Benoist, the president and CEO of St. Louis-based Enterprise Financial Services Corp, reminded his peers that as more banks put their liquidity to work, fierce competition puts pressures on rates and elevates risk.  As I went back to my notes in advance of this week’s event, my biggest takeaway from his presentation was we all talk about scale and net interest margins… but it’s clear that you need growth today regardless of who you are.  It is growth for the sake of existence.

Getting Social

To keep track of the conversation pre-, on-site and post-event on Twitter, use #BDGrow14 and/or @bankdirector + @aldominick.  In addition, I plan to post every day this week to About That Ratio, with tomorrow’s piece touching on the diminished importance of branch networks to underscore the importance of investments in technology.