The Purposeful Banker

How can banks better incorporate the loan portfolio into ALCO discussions? How has regulators' focus on interest rate risk impacted bankers? What are some resources for bankers that want to learn more about ALCO and interest rate risk? Dallas and Jess speak with  Darnell Canada , Managing Director at Darling Consulting Group, to answer those questions and more.

Earl Worley has been with KS bank for over 20 years and is ow the COO. Join Phil Buckley and Rollie Tillman as they find out from Earl how he views commercial lending, it's impact on the bank's health and what keeps the COO happy.

Banks struggle with lending when they try to be "all things to all people" and go about selling without a clear focus and strategy. They need to know which products and customers are profitable for them, and where they can provide real value outside of just the lowest rate. Then, spend their sales time and resources working those deals instead of spinning their wheels on low margin "commoditized"...

Today we're talking about a blog post written by our CEO, Carl Ryden, a couple weeks back: Putting First things First. Carl talked about the struggle to keep the urgent from crowding out the important. 

According to the research of Stephan Liozu , author of " The Pricing Journey ," there are two dimensions of pricing capability, Price Setting and Price Getting, and in order to excel at pricing, companies must master both dimensions.

What makes lenders happy at work? According to CoBiz Financial, named one of American Bankers' top 50 Best Banks for Work for in 2015, the key is providing lenders opportunities to deepen client relationships through exciting community initiatives. Jess Stone speaks with Scott Page, CEO of Colorado Business Bank and Arizona Business Bank, which are part of parent company CoBiz Financial, about the...

What's one of the scariest things that keeps a bank CEO up at night? Two words: data breach. PrecisionLender's Vice President of Information Security, Chris Nelms, talks with Dallas and Jess about how to ensure your company's security while working with vendors.

Jessica Stone speaks with PrecisionLender's VP of Information Security, Chris Nelms, about what you can do ensure the safety of your technology and data. Although every bank is different, your IT person will surely love you if you heed this advice.

In normal business, if you're right 95% of the time, you're a huge success. In banking, if you're only right 95% of the time, you're probably out of business. That risk means that banks and bankers are cautious when making decisions, and for almost every bank that means decisions are ponderously slow. To the general public, that's how businesses worked last century. Banks are starting to be seen a...

Joel Rosenberg talks with Jessica Stone about the fundamental shift that is moving the world under the feet of the US banking industry. Is the way your bank looking at Lending Club eerily reminiscent of the way GM and Ford looked at Honda in the early 1970's?

Carl Ryden, CEO at PrecisionLender , talks about their new banking conference, BankonPurpose . Why he felt there was a need for a new conference and what he hopes bankers will get from it.

Telling people that their data is "in the cloud" can seem like a weird movie scene, but it's usually the safest and easiest option. There's a reason most of the world's biggest companies are moving to the cloud.

A couple of weeks ago we released part one of our discussion with Charlie Johnson from Flagstar Bank in Michigan and and Andy Max from First National Bank of Omaha, and their efforts around integrating Salesforce.com within their banks. Because we just let them talk, we ended up with about 90 minutes of gold. Part two is where the guys talk about social "listening". Flagstar Bank started with Radi...

Dallas Wells and Jess Stone speak with Bill Ragle, SVP at Comerica Bank, about his experiences managing a lending team, and his experience and advice for managers and lenders alike.

We all wish we had more time in the day. During this LenderPerformance podcast, Dallas and Jess will explore tips, review technology and share best practices on how lenders can aim to be more efficient at work. 

Jess Stone interviews Brandi Haymore to discuss conferences. Banks spend big money sending employees to conferences, and often feel like they get very little return on their investment. However, they can be a great resource for the bank, and attendees that leverage the connections and knowledge properly can see big impacts on their careers. Brandi will share thoughts on how to prepare, what to do...

Implementing a CRM system in a bank can have tremendous value, but it is also incredibly hard to get it right.  Charlie and Andy will share some first hand experience in what worked and what didn't, and more importantly, what they wish they had known when they started.

Almost every community bank in the country claims to differentiate themselves through superior customer service. How do you define customer service? More importantly, how do we actually go about providing it instead of just talking about it? This week, Jessica Stone joins Dallas Wells in discussing the overarching concept of customer service and also the specifics of customer service in the bankin...

McKinsey's study of the S&P 1500 companies that found a 1% improvement in pricing would generate an 8% improvement in operating profits is something that we love to share. What we hear more often is how banks are focused on cutting costs. Cost cutting is seemingly always the first club out of the bag, but why? If your bank has a commercial loan portfolio of $500 million, a 1% improvement in pricin...

Dallas Wells talks about the 3 biggest problems he sees while working with banks trying to take their lending to the next level.

Who are the Mad Men characters in the stereotypical bank? In this light-hearted Labor Day special, we'll poke some fun at the stodgy "old boys' club that still runs a lot of banks, and to point out how they are being left behind by the new way of thinking.

A disclaimer, and that is that I am much more of a banker than a techie.  I'll be explaining this in layman's terms, but that is mostly because those are the only terms I have for it.  I work at a software company, but the only code I've ever written was a couple of very buggy macros for Excel.  So instead of the techie angle, I am tackling this issue from the business perspective, which is genera...

We think of pricing as your steering wheel for the bank. It should be the mechanism by which you are guiding production onto the books, but a lot of times it just doesn't feel that intentional.  The car itself is doesn't feel attached to that steering mechanism. The lenders are just going about their business pricing deals the way they've always priced them, or they're coming in after the fact and...

As we've asked bankers about topics and ideas that we should be covering with these podcasts, there is one answer that is almost universal, and that is HELP US WITH SALES.  Every bank out there is thinking about growth, and loan growth specifically.  Even those that are hitting their numbers have to work really hard to get there.  Banking is a highly regulated and seemingly commoditized business,...

Today, we're going to take a little bit different approach.  PrecisionLender has a customer success team, which happens to be where my role fits. Our job is a little more low-tech.  Specifically, we spend big chunks of every day on the phone with lenders.  Those conversations cut a wide swath, as they range from talking big picture strategy with management teams to talking through the mechanics of...