Tag: Bank Director magazine

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Three Strategic Issues Shaping Financial Services

By Al Dominick, CEO of DirectorCorps (parent co. to Bank Director & FinXTech) | @aldominick

Quickly:

  • Banks need to think beyond the notion that they can either build a technology solution or buy it — for inspiration, take a look at how Silicon Valley Bank uses APIs to tap into technology from third party providers.
  • Thanks to products like Amazon’s Alexa, financial institutions must now prepare for “hands-free banking.”
  • Various startups are using behavioral economics to nudge people towards making better financial choices for saving & investing.

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If you have been to any of our conferences, you’ve probably heard me (and others) encourage participants to get up & out from their offices to see what’s happening with their customers, potential partners and competition.  I do my best to practice what is preached — and have recent trips to San Francisco, New York City and Austin to prove it.  As I re-read hand written notes, dog-eared white papers and highlighted sections of annual reports, I realize just how much time I’ve spent talking about technology-driven trends shaping the financial industry.  To me, three of the bigger issues being discussed right now involve:

  1. The push for retail customers, which may already be spurring dealmaking.
  2. How customers experience and interact with their bank — which broadly ties into the question should an institution buy, partner or mimic a fintech; and
  3. Given all the hype surrounding machine learning and advanced decision modeling, leadership teams want to know how to augment a bank’s revenues & relationships with such technologies.

To these three trends, both our editor-in-chief, Jack Milligan, and I agree that most bankers understand the imperative to innovate around key aspects of their business, whether it’s payments, mobile in all its many permutations, lending, new account onboarding or data.

Personally, when it comes to knowing one’s customer (and potential customer), I find any good experience starts with great data.  As Carl Ryden, the CEO and Co-Founder at PrecisionLender, made clear at their recent Bank of Purpose conference, “if you hold your data close to the vest and you don’t do anything with it, it’s not an asset. It’s a liability.”

So with that in mind, let me close by sharing a link to our newest issue of Bank Director magazine.  This is our “Great Ideas” issue, one in which we highlight companies like USAA who crowdsource upwards of 10,000 ideas per year for products and new technology.  At a time when banks of all sizes are starting to take advantage of platform-based services, this new digital issue is one that I am really proud to share.

 

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Since You Can’t Own a Car Dealership

As my colleague Jack Milligan writes in our 2nd quarter issue of Bank Director magazine, just because a bank can’t own a car dealership doesn’t mean there isn’t “enormous flexibility in determining a bank’s strategy.” Curious what this means? Read on.

2Q14

A Sneak Peek at the Core Revenue Champs

Each year, Bank Director magazine looks at all U.S. banks and thrifts to identify the strongest growth banks. We rank the top performers across four separate categories: core deposits, core noninterest income, net loans and leases and the most important, core revenue. Since the magazine mails today, I thought to offer a sneak peek of the results:

Screen Shot 2014-04-24 at 6.06.07 AM

What I find interesting about the top two banks on this very strong list: both Customers Bank and EverBank Financial designed their business models around technology from their very beginnings.

Find Your Balance

As I read through an advance copy of the issue, it strikes me that many business areas that historically provided revenue growth are simply not growing fast enough to overcome new capital and regulatory requirements.  In this light, you can understand why many say times couldn’t be more challenging for growth in community or regional banking. The corollary to this? Balancing organic and external growth is a key focus area for bank management and boards.

Increasingly, I hear that growth-focused banks are considering (or implementing) strategies that create revenue growth from both net interest income and fee based revenue business lines — think government guaranteed lending, asset based lending, leasing, trust and wealth management services. Clearly, as interest margins and loan volumes remain subject to compression and intense competition, the “optimization” of fee-based revenue is becoming pivotal in enhancing shareholder value.

‘Sup Big Easy

True, a number of banks seek to extend their footprint and franchise value through acquisition. Yet, many more aspire to build the bank internally.  Some show organic growth as they build their base of core deposits and expand their customer relationships; others leverage product innovation or focus on their branch network. I bring these approaches up in advance of next week’s Growth Conference at the Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans. We designed this event to showcase strategies, structures, processes and technologies that a bank’s CEO and board might consider to fuel their own growth.

Unlike trade shows and other events, we limit participation to a financial institution’s key officers and directors to ensure those joining us are not just committed to distinguishing their performance and reputation, but also are appropriate peers to share time and ideas with. From companies like StrategyCorps, Ignite Sales and VerifyValid to PwC, Fiserv and IBM, we have a tremendous roster of companies joining us in Louisiana to share “what’s working” at the myriad banks they support. As I’ve done for our other events (e.g. the sister conference to Growth, Acquire or Be Acquired), I’ll be posting a number of pieces next week from the Crescent City and invite you to follow along on Twitter via @aldominick, @bankdirector and using #BDGrow14.

Aloha Friday!