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Today, I’m starting a new blog series entitled “Peeking Under The Hood” where we will look at the FDIC’s Small Business Lending Survey released a few days ago. You can find a link to it here. Now, I know spending four days in an FDIC report is right up there with watching paint dry, the …
"Peeking Under The Hood: A look at small business lending. Part 1 of 4 Read More »
After coming back from the ICBA’s LEAD FWD conference (a very good conference that you should consider attending next year just to hear the discussions among community bankers), I did like most other conference attendees. I unpacked my bag, checked my emails, and started sorting out my notes that I’d taken at the conference to …
Who am I? How do I see myself? At the risk of turning a community banking blog into an existential conversation about the meaning of life…let me advise you to spend some time asking yourself that in light of your position as a community banker. Here’s why. In preparing a webinar series on fundamental banking …
I think I have reached a milestone in my life. I’m starting to turn into the “GET OFF MY LAWN!” guy…and I’m completely ok with that! “Grumpy Old Men” and “Grumpier Old Men” are becoming less and less favorite comedies of mine and more like self-help films. I wish I was being exaggerative here, but …
April is Community Banking Month if you didn’t already realize this. I fully realize that, more than likely, the town is not redecorating the square/Main Street/main hub in your honor and I seriously doubt the schoolchildren are coloring the pictures from “Great Moments in Banking” for you to hang on the fridge. (“Daddy, who is …
So, we’ve all heard the news about what was probably our first experience with a brand…Toys R Us. After the “right in the childhood!!!” moment this brought about, it really made me focus on the power of brands in our lives…and just how damanging financial mismanagement can destroy powerful (even dare I say culturally important) …
"I don't wanna grow up…" The Power of Experience in Branding Read More »
Recently, I read an article about the Ohio State Buckeye football team and how several of the players had been asked at the NFL Combine to recount their experience of the 55-24 loss at Iowa during the 2017 year that kept the Buckeyes out of the College Football Playoff. Basically, it would be the equivalent …
Recently, I saw a bank post on Twitter that they were running a promotion to spotlight their customers’ side hustles and it got me to thinking… a) What a great idea for a community bank to do! b) Just how important are these in our communities. If a bank is supposed to be a catalyst …
I love the efficiency ratio in banking. Sadly, this is not the geekiest thing I have ever written, but it is nonetheless true. In my humble opinion, it is the most informative ratio in all of finance with the possible exception of RoE in a DuPont context. (Now, THAT may be the geekiest.) What it …
Teenagers are prone to be rebellious. It is part of growing up and discovering “who you are” and all of that stuff. It is a time when we begin to listen to music that we doubt our parents would approve of, we begin to develop our own ideas about the world and the issues at …
Barret School of Banking • 650 East Parkway South, Memphis, TN 38104
Phone: (901) 321-4000 • barret@barretbanking.org