Bankruption: How Community Banking Can Survive Fintech

Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Cover Design: babarzaman

Cover Image: © Lightspring/Shutterstock

To Brooke, Lowen, and Jack, for the constant support and inspiration.

To my parents and family, for the unrelenting encouragement.

Preface

As battle‐scarred survivors of a financial crisis and deep recession, community bankers today confront a frustratingly slow recovery, stiff competition from larger banks and other financial institutions, and the responsibility of complying with new and existing regulations. Some observers have worried that these obstacles—particularly complying with regulations—may prove insurmountable.

–Ben Bernanke, chairman, board of governors of the Federal Reserve System

We Have Become Enslaved by Fintech Content

Today's bankers get so much help. A constant bombardment of LinkedIn articles, blog posts, tweets, podcasts, books(!), reports from big and small consulting firms, conferences, private discussion forums and tweet‐ups, and, of course, an incessant barrage of regulation updates.

The help/noise would overwhelm any banker, if the content of the cacophony hadn't already done so.

Flippant conference panel conjecture, medium expositions on what's happening or what's not happening, limited sample set surveys, and otherwise poorly researched analysis clog the analytical filter of even the most engaged banker.

Figure P.1 The Number of Financial Institutions in the United States by Type

SOURCE: CUNA and FDIC

The number of banks and credit unions has dropped significantly over the past 35 years.

One day, peer to peer (excuse me, marketplace) lending is going to transform how someone borrows money, and the next day it is torn apart by the SEC.1 Then, it's legal and thriving: all unicorns and showboats. Seemingly, a few days later, it's in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)'s crosshairs (though consumers don't seem to be worried about it).

As my buddy @leimer is fond of saying, Fintech never sleeps. Perhaps. Or maybe, fintech never shuts up.

According to Mike D King (@bankwide), in April 2016, #fintech was seeing 138 unique tweets and 562,000 exposures per hour. That doesn't include all those tweets about fintech that don't contain the word, of course.

This continuous media and pundit churn delivers the consequence of imposed, conscious blindness. Those of us who should know most about what is happening end up knowing the very least, because, to put it simply, keeping track of it all is mind‐numbing and defeating.

Maybe the fintech startup hype machine is serving its purpose: beating bankers into submission. Smashing, loud dissonant intimidation puts the silent, introverted banker quants who thrive in the shadows, directly where the STEM experts want them: fetal position, wailing. And, Stockholm syndrome may yet force partnership discussions.

Sexy, boisterous, overcompensating fintech startups extending the partnership olive branch to financial institutions (again). Perhaps the noise is simply a byproduct of the remarkable innovation these guys bring to the table.

So maybe the weight of it all is something other than the noise.

Maybe It's That Community Banking as We Know It Is No Longer Relevant

FDIC‐insured institutions dropped from 8,396 at the end of 2007 to 6,210 at the end of 2015, and credit unions fell from 7,284 to 5,410 during the same time period. This has got to be the end of banking as we know it, right?

Buckminster Fuller (inventor of the geodesic dome, a pioneer of sustainable planetary thinking, and one of the greatest comprehensive design minds of the modern era) spent most of his adult life relearning everything he was taught in school.2

His rationale for this was quite simple: much of what he learned in school classrooms and texts originated from facts that had been skewed over time by governments, religions, societies, or simply accidents (a byproduct of human‐powered recordkeeping).

The banking world of today has more contaminated and more biased reporting than Bucky's of a hundred years ago.

For example, if one bothered to research the data behind the aforementioned stats, one would find that nearly the same number of institutions disappeared the six years preceding 2007 as the six years following.

Does that make the trend more or less alarming? What if there were more sizable declinations of financial institutions at other points in history—would that change the argument? What if, when further analyzing the data, one would find the disappearing FIs were being replaced (via new charters) at a much slower rate than in the past? And what if, in one's quieter moments, one were to consider that artificial intelligence can and should automatically manage money for humans and that blockchains and their enabled technologies such as bidirectional payment channels will be the ultimate arbiters, thereby making banks and credit unions obsolete?

This is the juncture when the preponderance of noise clouds the real data and obscures actionable intelligence.

Futurists, technologists, and others suggest an end to banking as we know it. While today's banking will undergo complete transformation over time, that may not be today's banking story. The future of banking is entertaining to read and lots of fun to listen to or to debate at a conference, but it's also not the best use of time for a banker who needs to drag her credit union or bank across the ever‐widening chasm between yesterday and today.

If you want the very end of the banking story: ones and zeroes win. In the future, thousands of existing financial institutions will assimilate, our money will be managed for us automatically via artificial intelligence, dumb or smart contracts and learned behaviors, and no banked human anywhere on earth will have to think about bills, managing their money, or rates on insurances, mortgages, or deposits.

I spend a few pages discussing this idea at the end of this book. A few pages out of a couple hundred. The reason is simple: any prediction toward the big future will prove itself true at some point in the horizon of time, but we should not confuse that far off world with today's—or even the next 10 years'—reality. And, perhaps if financial institutions make small changes now, they can adapt or, better yet, knock a dent in that trajectory.

Not unlike Bucky's endeavor, today's community banking leaders need a clear baseline—a cleansing of the various myths that have promulgated themselves into mainstream thinking.

Where possible, Bankruption will use unadulterated data to distill the myths from the truths, the hypotheses from the facts. Historical evidence and detailed data (rather than daily trends) will inform the practical guidance for short‐term and long‐term planning contained in the latter two‐thirds of this book.

You'll find this data in the many charts throughout the book, and to round out the analysis, many more charts are available via the book's website for you to download and use in your own presentations.

In an attempt to maintain that focus, we won't spend much time in this book on Ethereum, digital payments, internet of things, artificial intelligence, etc. that are in the midst of evolution today. While these topics must be given mind space as they may foundationally change the future of banking, they are outside the scope of this text—Brett King or Chris Skinner can offer you some great reads on these subjects.

Speaking of stellar industry thinkers, this book contains something that no conference has been able to do: get the absolute best minds in the industry in one place to share their thoughts on near‐term, practical guidance for community banking executives.

I'm humbled by the generosity of these thinkers and doers. Over 20 brilliant friends, from community bankers to industry analysts, offer their expert advice to community bankers—exclusively for Bankruption readers—and they asked for nothing in return.

So here it is: a project that has taken way too long, and required way too much sacrifice from my wife, co‐workers and family. My passion for the community banking industry is no secret, but all the passion in the world isn't enough to return relevance to a dying model. My hope is that by shedding the weight of the noise, you and your team can build a timely, executable business model around a strategy that makes sense for you, with achievable goals and deliberate solutions.

‐ John

Oh and some notes:

At times, I can't stand the noise, either. By Chapter 3 of Bankruption, you'll find stream‐of‐consciousness breaks. This is my brain making sense of it all during the extended writing process—the effect of a person living in (and contributing to) the noise 24/7 for 10 years. If it gets too thick, feel free to skip forward. Heaven knows I wish I could have.

While I use inspiration from around the world for various solutions, Bankruption is focused on the U.S. community banking system of credit unions and community banks.

Unlike other books that casually use the word bank to refer to community banks and credit unions, I use them separately because they are distinct in their politics and policies, and sometimes data relates specifically to just one group.

That said, community banking refers to the thing that both do—service banking in communities (geographical, employer, digitally, or otherwise).

Don't forget to download all of the charts in the text and many more from the website. Feel free to use them in your own internal presentations. Just keep all the sourcing and copyrights viewable to others.

Introduction

Prior to the start of the ALCO meeting on this particular Tuesday, the heir‐apparent to the chairman glances at his dad's and granddad's oil paintings on the wallpapered conference room wall.

If this coffee mug could talk.

First official week as CEO. His confidence is strong as he is well‐trained on how to run his family's banking business. And, thankfully, the team that led the bank for the last 35 years has all stayed on to support him.

A deep breath. 7:30 a.m. Time to earn his oil painting!

He kicks off the weekly meeting with a brief, thoughtful soliloquy on legacy and leadership.

The well‐rehearsed speech gives assurances that he will embrace the people, processes, and strategy that his father adopted from his father. After some applause and hugs, he leaves to give the same spiel in a few other conference rooms down I‐90.

An impressive accomplishment to own and operate a third generation business where only 12 percent3 of all family‐run businesses make it that far, and only 3 percent make it to the following generation. He knows these numbers because he's challenged them his whole life. Even the bank's examiners remind him of the risk in lending to multigenerational businesses. But it's what you do around here, and, it's worked for 92 years.

And while his goose isn't cooked for running a family‐owned and operated business, it will soon be deeply fried for other reasons.

The committees and the meetings, ALCO and otherwise, give a false‐sense of control.

In his first day as CEO, this charming, 50‐something Wharton MBA and ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking scholar made a promise to continue sowing the seeds of decay4 for his 92‐year‐old community bank.

No oil painting for you!

Notes

1. United States of America before the Securities and Exchange Commission, Securities Act of 1933, release no. 8984, November 24, 2008, https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2008/33‐8984.pdf.

2. http://bfi.org/about‐fuller.

3. Family Business Institute, https://www.familybusinessinstitute.com/consulting/succession‐planning/.

4. Kirk Dando, Predictive Leadership: Avoiding the 12 Critical Mistakes That Derail Growth‐Hungry Companies (St. Martin's Press, 2014).

Additional Thanks

To Sean, Gabe, and BenMo. Stan Goudeau and Don Shafer. Marty Sunde and my First Team. My product team, the wingmen, and the rest of my Kasasa family. Paul Blinderman and Shaun Pauling. John Kish, Stephen Rice and The Riverside Company. My buddies in fintech and in community banking. My contributor friends, each of you, for different reasons: I am eternally grateful.

Chapter 1

An Overview of the Bankruption

Money can't buy life.

—Bob Marley (final words before death)

Community Banking Has No Future

Community banks overdosed on arrogance and comfort in the status quo. The vice of Pride plays the long game. She starts harmless enough—young and reckless. Discerning and punctual. But Pride, a generation or three down the line, quite deeply cataracts and sloths. Bankers' kids become loan officers become CEOs become chairmen become barnacle board members of their grandkids' banks.

By and large, community banks are family‐begun businesses that have only lasted this long because banking competition was light, with controlled access points. The ultimate problem with family businesses, perhaps, is not pride—it's that blood overrules brains.

Credit unions, you're not off the hook, either.

Quite a bit of legacy thinking going on there, too, with far too many inefficiencies, a model the average consumer doesn't know or care about, and a belief system that outstrips capability. Oh and your boards are typically full of people who have no experience in banking or technology, and zero financial interest in the health or future of the credit union.

If any of that cut a bit too close to home, pay attention, it gets worse.

Because despite the tireless work of many thousands of passionate employees who sought to advance their community institutions from the inside, community banks and credit unions are bloated, outdated, human‐powered, ego‐driven, know‐it‐all, do‐it‐all, whiny, tired, overregulated, underappreciated customer experience nightmares.

Of course, that's the easy part to fix. Community institutions still have to thrive within the ever‐changing banking landscape. And with pole shifts occurring to every foregone conclusion in their business models, top financial institutions today are defining winning strategies that acknowledge and respect these transformative forces.

Although there are a few community banks and credit unions committing to the difficult process of re‐examining and changing their business based upon the realities of today, there's not enough to make a difference. Not enough to save the industry from its own damned self.

This is where my brain sat for about a year. My heart crushed; my soul smashed, until I became absolutely obsessed with finding any possible cure to the terminal illness. It only makes sense that incumbents should have one or more advantages. We just need to find them, exploit them, and shore up the weaknesses.

Community Banking Relies Too Heavily on Physical Proximity

Years ago, people in towns across America needed access to capital and a safer place to store their money. Customers lacked the capability to travel too far from home, and bankers didn't want the money they lent to go too far from the safe, so they established a nearby physical location to perform these services. This nearness worked both ways, positioned around the ideal of convenience.

Proximity manufactured a false sense of trust between the two parties. Either side trusting the other not to take its money and run—because they have a big, heavy, unmovable structure with columns, or because they live nearby.

And the mutual lie worked pretty well.

This falsehood of belief became further twisted when people learned that the attire they wore to the bank directly impacted how they were treated (e.g., more favorable loan rates). In perhaps an early form of identity fraud, customers would don their Sunday best to get the banker's best.

Somehow, this lie of convenience between the two parties became known as a relationship, and mistaken for intimacy—a word that connotes personal and honest, shared knowledge—even though the association was, and has remained for decades, anything but intimate.

And over the years, with few exceptions, regulation has reinforced the false benefits of human touch–powered banking by, among other things, raising insurance rates on deposits originated in areas beyond an FI's local branch network. Their assumption: Deposits and accounts sourced digitally (or otherwise outside physical branches) are more inclined to travel to other FIs at a whim.

Today, Data Proximity Yields Intimacy

In 2015, we left behind five exabytes of data exhaust every two minutes: from Periscoped hip‐hop concerts to Snapchatted high school homecomings to YouTubed cat videos to less important things like emojiied business emails (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Creating Five Exabytes of Data

SOURCE: Berkeley School of Information, 2015

The time, in minutes, it takes humans to create the amount of data from the dawn of time to 2003. Another way to look at it is if you wanted to watch a video of everything that was sent across our global networks in one second of 2015, it would take you about five years of 24×7 screen time.

Not only does each of us leave behind gigabytes‐thick data residue daily, but we also have become—consciously and subconsciously—comfortable, and nearly dependent, on our data streams.

These days, well‐timed, well‐placed, well‐modeled informed digital interactions build relationships, trust, and understanding. This all but ensures that any strategy relying solely on physical proximity is a liability.

Data Proximity Has Cast a Very Bright Light on the Cracks of Banking

As Americans begin to taste and feel the ease and fluidity of omni‐channel in retail, theme parks, and so on, they learn that innocuous data, like that which sat in ink on paper shopping lists, can greatly enhance their lives. They see how we can talk to devices, and they will do things for us (Alexa, play some Violent Femmes). They see how devices can talk to other devices (via Internet of Things) and turn on lamps or adjust the temperature for us (see Figure 1.2). Consumers see all of this happening today, and understand that it is no longer science fiction.

Figure 1.2 Forecast: Internet of Things Devices (in Billions)

SOURCE: Juniper Research, 2015

The forecasted explosion of networked physical devices, buildings, et al. embedded with sensors and software that collect and exchange data.

Conversely, my friendly community bank teller helped me get $450 cash out of an account in a face‐to‐face transaction, but then wished me a Bye, Steve as I began to walk away.

The obvious question then follows, Why can't the place that houses my most important data, my bank or credit union, use the information I give it all the time (e.g., credit card, bill payments, balance data, timing of future bills, timing of future deposits, etc.) to help me? Why can't banking be easy and protective? Why doesn't my financial provider know me?

And so today, American consumers bounce between two totally different worlds:

Community bankers have always stayed behind the curve, in an attempt to moderate risk and lessen unnecessary expense.

But where does risk mitigation end and enterprise risk begin? When does doing the thing you've always done become the riskiest thing you could do? Welcome to the bankruption—the watershed for community banks and credit unions.

Chapter 2

Community Banking Is Broken

What Is Community Banking?

For nearly 200 years, the U.S. economy has been fueled by small, independent institutions lending local money to local people who earned local money that got spent locally.

While the smallest it's been, our financial system is unique across the globe with over 11,000 different competitive financial provider access points (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2).

Figure 2.1 Forecast: Total FIs in the United States by 2020

SOURCE: FDIC, NCUA & Peak Performance Consulting Group

The numbers of banks and credit unions have declined steadily since 1984.

Figure 2.2 Percentage of Deposits by Asset Size in the United States

SOURCE: FDIC, NCUA; * = Forecast by author

The assets of community banks and credit unions under $10 billion in assets have moved with rigor to large institutions since 1994.

These small, community‐based banking institutions often catered their products and services around their community's specific needs, such as agriculture lending in rural towns, high savings rates for employees, and commercial real estate lending in micropolitan communities.

Until recently, local geography has often defined an institution's community. While the idea of locality was an important distinction for community banks and the majority of credit unions over the past 100 years, some credit unions (such as those related to Special Employer Groups with a nationwide employer base) have successfully demonstrated that communities of people not bound by physical divides exist and still remain loyal to an institution. To compete in today's landscape, banks need their regulators to adjust to a similar nonphysical concept of community. Credit unions have already begun to do this with the easing of their market area rules to include website as a market area.

While the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System define1 community banks as any bank under $10 billion in assets, the OCC and FDIC both traditionally used the $1 billion threshold.

In 2012, the FDIC, predicting the community banking industry would soon outgrow the $1 billion restriction, set out to add more dials and levers to the definition.2 Low and behold, the FDIC found there were common attributes among