BID® Daily Newsletter
Feb 15, 2013

BID® Daily Newsletter

Feb 15, 2013

USING GIRL SCOUT COOKIES TO BUILD A BETTER BANK


For all you cookie lovers out there, you'll be happy to know that you no longer have to wait for your neighborhood Girl Scout to come knocking to get a fix of your favorite sweet treats. Now, you can track down those delicious Samoas with just the click of a button and use the Girl Scout Cookie Finder App, to locate the nearest cookie sale right on your phone. Now that a century old organization like the Girl Scouts has jumped on the mobile bandwagon, we can't help but wonder if community banks are taking full advantage of these technologies. Mobile banking gained 10mm new users in 2012, but as Javelin Strategy & Research points out, some banks are missing opportunities. This is a hot topic, so we booked Javelin to share best practices with attendees of our annual Executive Management Conference (EMC) in April. These experts will discuss how banks are adopting mobile technologies, including how the Gen Y segment fits in, and provide takeaways to immediately improve your own mobile strategy. Like a live version of the Banc Investment Daily, the EMC is designed to address issues important to community bankers right now and leave attendees with actionable steps to strengthen the bank. A couple of weeks ago, we challenged our product specialists to find ways to help your bank boost performance and to present those tips at the conference. They are preparing now and we think you will find the results useful as you continue to face economic, technological and regulatory disruptions this year. During the EMC, you will hear dynamic presentations designed to help you keep up with the changing industry and ensure you are up-to-date on critical issues outside of your bank. That is why beyond the Javelin team, we have also locked down a seasoned economist, an expert on urbanization and an expert on real estate (regularly advises large banks where risks and opportunities exist in real estate). These topics were selected, among the many others we have scheduled, because we believe they can positively impact on your lending efforts, stay on top of trends and understand where the risks are for this year and next. It is vital to capture new loan customers and ensure existing ones stay so we have also included sessions on growing your loan portfolio and hedging techniques to help you increase customers. We know that regulatory and accounting changes will also have a major impact on your bank and just keeping up with the flow is intense. In fact, just a single proposed FASB accounting rule could totally disrupt banking because it will significantly change how banks calculate loan loss reserves. This change even has some experts saying bank reserves could increase by as much as 50%. That is why we have locked in yet another expert here to assist from Crowe Horwath LLP. As for the regulatory side of things, enterprise risk is a hot topic right now and a focus of examiners. That's why we have scheduled an expert to help, so you will leave the EMC knowing which regulatory changes deserve your attention, how to assess efforts to comply with requirements and the importance of having a plan in place to manage risk within your organization. Finally, community bankers also need a solid plan to increase profits and reduce costs. That is why we have one expert focusing on a high-level evaluation of the balance sheet and income statement (to determine where risks and opportunities exist) and another delving into specific opportunities to help you further reduce funding costs (to boost your bottom line) and yet another focused on specific techniques to improve profitability (by leveraging customer data in your system). This is just the tip of the iceberg of what we are going to cover at the event, so we hope to see you there. The entire event is designed to help you strengthen your bank, boost your profitability, capture more customers and face challenges that are coming down the road. While this event cannot cure an appetite for Girl Scout cookies, we look forward to seeing you April 7-10 in San Francisco. Agenda: See the Related Links section on the bottom right of this page.
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