No one has a crystal ball that can predict when and how the economic fallout from the coronavirus will end. But community banks need a way to understand how their capital will fare as conditions change – and which loans they need...
The Shortfalls of Loan-Level CRE Stress Testing in a COVID-19 World
The coronavirus has presented the first threat to community banks since the 2008 financial crisis. For the first time, stress testing is a real exercise. What community banks across the country are discovering with dread right...
News Alert: Two out of Three Banks Say No to the Community Bank Leverage Ratio
Thanks, but no thanks: That’s the resounding message from community banks about the new community bank leverage ratio framework. Two out of every three banks chose not to opt into the new framework, according to an exclusive...
When the Hypothetical is Now: The Importance of Pandemic Stress Testing
After the 2008 Great Recession and prior to the coronavirus pandemic, regulators turned to stress testing to establish bank capital adequacy levels. The Federal Reserve established a program called the Comprehensive Capital...
Why Banks Need to Get Ahead of the COVID-19 Economy
The one thing we know about the future economic impact of COVID-19 is that we do not know what it will be. The internal optimist in all of us hopes that the lockdowns start to unwind, the economy quickly returns to business as...
Regression Depression: Uh Oh, Your Model is Wrong
COVID-19 has every bank thinking about how to modify its reserves. Some of the largest institutions have taken double-digit hits on that basis. Community banks, understandably, are uncertain about what exactly they should be...
How to Keep Your M&A Deals Alive During COVID-19
As the COVID-19 pandemic keeps the global economy in shackles, most community banks are not focused on strategic initiatives like M&A. However, there are two camps of banks that must think about M&A during the pandemic: those...
Beyond Loan Modifications and PPP: What Lenders Should be Doing with Vulnerable Borrowers
During our recent COVID-19 stress testing webinar, I discussed how one of the primary goals of stress testing is to rank your loans based on their capital at risk as measured by the stress test. Community banks can then use these...
Projecting Interest Income Needs New Approach in Pandemic Economy
COVID-19 may be as contagious economically as it is medically. Community banks, whose lifeblood is interest income, have significant exposure to companies that have been hit particularly hard. They face the question of how to...