A year ago (JRN 37:40), we took exception with United Bank of Philadelphia because 87% of its loan portfolio was tied to the success of small businesses (56% in Commercial Real Estate (CRE), 26% in Commercial & Industrial (C&I) +…
Category: Pandemic
Community Banks Critical for Small Businesses
According to the Federal Reserve’s 2021 Small Business Credit Survey, 48% of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applicants went to community banks for funding while only 43% went to Big Banks. What’s more, 78% of those that applied at community banks…
Record Low Interest Margins Put Squeeze On
The average net interest margin at our nation’s banks contracted to its lowest level on record (2.56%) at March 31, 2021. In one year, the industry saw a decline of $29.8 billion in interest income, a decrease of 17.6%. If…
Mortgage Performance Declines
A recent report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) grabbed our attention with this headline. Then we realized, it was comparing mortgage performance to a year ago (Q1’20 i.e. pre-pandemic). While we did see a spike…
Credit Loss Expectations Brighten
Coral Gables, Florida, June 16, 2021 Coral Gables, FL: BAUERFINANCIAL, Inc., the nation’s premier Bank and Credit Union rating firm, is pleased to report that the majority of U.S. banks have been able to reverse loan loss provisions as the…
Economic Injustice Puts Banks on Notice
As we write this week’s article, CEOs of six of the nation’s largest banks are taking a verbal beating from Congress. Lawmakers took exception to some of the ways they perceive these bankers have taken advantage of poorer clients during…
Lending a Helping Hand, Sometimes Means Lending.
Loan volumes at the nation’s community banks grew over 10% during 2020. And that’s no coincidence. With help from the Government’s Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) Program, Commercial & Industrial (C&I) Loans accounted for more than two-thirds of that growth. But…
Temporary Hit to Capital Ratios
…and They’d do it Again. This week we will take a look at how some community banks have been helping their neighbors and communities during the past year. In some cases, that help has come at the expense of the…
Big Bank Branches are Fewer by the Month
It seems that every week there’s a new story about a bank that’s closing branches. We’ve almost become numb to it… unless of course it’s our branch that’s shutting down. But its who is closing those branches is what we…
Financial Inclusion: We Can All Play a Part
The FDIC launched the pilot of a new public awareness campaign last week (April 6th) on the benefits of having a bank account. The pilot targets the Houston and Atlanta areas, where it confirmed that both Black Americans and Hispanic…