Articles
The Great Deposit Race: Optimizing the “Less is More Strategy”
Choosing a proactive strategy to prune unproductive accounts may seem radical By Gregg Early It may seem counterintuitive to think that the best way to build primacy, grow deposits organically, and generate more non-interest income is to focus on determining which accounts aren’t financially productive and how to fix that relationship with your FI. Community…
Read MoreCommunity FI Leaders’ Survey Delivers Revealing Deposit Expectations for 2024
By Mike Branton When it comes to finding out what community banks and credit unions are planning for the coming year related to deposit performance the best way is to ask them directly. There’s no doubt that there’s plenty of data regularly published by third parties about community FIs and the broader banking industry regarding…
Read MoreResearch Part 3: SMB Banking Relationship Paradoxes Are Opportunities for Community FIs
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a monthly series exploring market research we commissioned with financial services firm Cornerstone Advisors to get a state of market view through the eyes of SMB leaders across the country. Our main goal was to understand their challenges now and how community financial institutions could best compete…
Read MoreResearch Part 2: Reinventing a Community FI Strategy to Regain SMB Market Share
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a monthly series exploring market research we commissioned with financial services firm Cornerstone Advisors to get a state of market view through the eyes of SMB leaders across the country. Our main goal was to understand their challenges now and how community financial institutions could best compete…
Read MoreRecording: Community Bankers Survey on the 3 Ds: Deposits, Differentiation, and Decisions
Download Presentation (PDF) We decided that if we want to know how bankers are planning for deposit growth next year, we weren’t going to rely on statistics and projections – we were going straight to the source. We asked hundreds of community bank and credit union leaders to tell us what they were planning for…
Read MoreWhat Banking Can Learn from Amazon Prime
By Mike Branton Building a fair exchange of value in a subscriber-first ecosystem is a winner for consumers and Amazon. If there’s one program that stands well above all others as the greatest marriage of a digital retail products selling platform and value-based subscription pricing, it is Amazon Prime. The numbers don’t lie, making…
Read MoreResearch Part 1: Reinventing a Community FI Strategy to Regain SMB Market Share
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a monthly series exploring market research we commissioned with financial services firm Cornerstone Advisors to get a state of market view through the eyes of SMB leaders across the country. Our main goal was to understand their challenges now and how community financial institutions could best compete…
Read MoreRethinking the Small Business Checking Playbook
By Dave DeFazio This article was previously published on BankDirector.com Even before interest rates rose, community banks and credit unions were battling megabanks, regional banks and the new wave of digital banks and fintechs to keep and attract traditional retail and small business checking account customers. This battle is for only a small percentage of…
Read MoreNavigating Beyond the “Free Checking” Era in Business Checking
By Dave DeFazio The era of simply offering a free checking account for business checking customers is done. And community FIs’ biggest competitors – megabanks and digital banks – are well aware of that. They’ve been busy adding value to their business checking accounts, especially in the past few years. Unfortunately, it’s not the same…
Read MoreRevitalize Your SMB Checking Accounts and Take on the Megabanks
By Gregg Early A study done by the Independent Community Bankers Association (ICBA) revealed that community banks provide about 60% of SMB loans nationwide. That puts community financial institutions at the center of their communities. It also means that SMBs are a crucial part of a healthy community FI’s portfolio. Both these axioms are the…
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