828 Main St, 15th Floor Lynchburg VA 24504 www.countsauction.com Call us for your Auction & Appraisal needs. 434-525-2991 pastures only when those clients make noise about switching banks. While it would be troublesome enough for banks if it were only the largest depositors who are motivated enough to switch banks, smaller depositors are equally focused on deposit rates. Flipping the Narrative As the saying goes, information is power. Establishing optimal deposit pricing requires not only knowing what deposit rates your peers are offering but having a firm grasp on how rate increases will impact your overall customer relationship profitability. Simply increasing deposit rates to match those of competitors is a risky move that can result in a compressed net interest margin (NIM) as deposits become more expensive, and holding onto existing customers may not necessarily require blanket rate hikes across the board. To determine when and where higher deposit rates make sense, community banks should employ profitability models that spell out exactly how various rate hikes could impact the profitability of specific customer relationships — both existing and new customers — and identify what the potential individual account losses would mean for their bottom line. Full customer profitability platforms allow banks to analyze and determine the value of both their comprehensive customer portfolios and their individual customer relationships. Such analysis can pinpoint which customer accounts are most profitable, how and where profits could potentially be improved and when, and whether the cost of higher deposit rates or exception pricing outweighs the loss of a customer’s accounts. Modeling even allows banks to project the entire lifetime value of individual customer relationships. Without modeling and a customer profitability analysis tool that can provide comprehensive customer base insight, it can be extremely difficult to determine which customer relationships truly warrant exception pricing. As always, fair and reasonable deposit pricing practices need to be considered when making pricing decisions. Holding on to existing customer deposits and attracting new ones requires competitive deposit rates, but increasing overall deposit rates is not always the best approach. Banks should employ profitability models to help identify when and where higher deposit pricing can really pay off for their institutions. Making such decisions without comprehensive information could potentially prove harmful to a bank’s profitability. To continue this discussion or for more information, please contact Dennis Falk at pcbb.com or dfalk@pcbb.com. Dedicated to serving the needs of community banks, PCBB’s comprehensive and robust set of solutions includes cash management, international services, lending solutions, and risk management advisory services. 20 The CommunityBanker
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