Is My Bank Really Big Enough to Justify Thorough Analysis? The Short Answer Is Yes.

While meeting with the CFO of a $200M bank, he described that he currently had his spreadsheets set up to import data from his core system, make a few back-of-the-napkin judgments, and come up with a reasonable estimate for his interest rate and liquidity risk. He argued that he had been through exams within the past few months with both federal and state examiners, neither of which raised an issue. As a result, he asked us if there was enough of a benefit from a solution like Capitalytics to justify an investment.

The short answer is yes -- even if your bank already has a process in place, the integrated value proposition of a sophisticated service like Capitalytics is compelling enough to warrant a second glance. Here's why.

• Integrated Offering - Many community banks assume that, by virtue of their size, they cannot afford integrated analysis suites, and users are comfortable acting as intermediate conduits between spreadsheets (where calculations may be "tuned") and applications. Thinking about the time, and the value of that time -- as well as how small banks are current being pressured by regulators and the market to "do more with less" -- should give one enough pause to realize that every minute in a community bank is vital to the bank's success. Integrated packages are not luxuries, but should be strictly scrutinized for the value that they bring to the table. Capitalytics, for instance, easily takes information from your bank's core system and uses it in several facets of its analyses so that actionable results are only one click away.
• Lower Cost - In these times of hardware commoditization, the cost of a powerful server that has a life of two to five years can be measured in less than a day of the time of a busy bank executive's time. This means that, if, in the span of a year, a computer can save a single day of an employee's time (provided the money and work are both available), then the investment is valuable and should be seriously considered. Capitalytics takes the same approach: by carefully working to manage our own operating costs, we are able to offer a recurring service that takes the place of several sophisticated employees and/or contractors who understand the availability of quantitative resources, web based software development, information security, databases, and algorithms for a price of a few hours of the bank executive's time. Since our price is tiered based on a bank's assets, it is only in the case of a $10B that our price approaches the unloaded salary of an employee. With that, our service offers analysis of your bank, its portfolio (including risk metrics for examiners), its peers, its markets, its employees' productivity, and documentation for quarterly reports and exams (including geocoding for CRA and HMDA) -- all available any time that you need answers.
• Start with Simple, and Grow to Complex as Necessary - While we do have several tools and resources available to our customers, one of the key aspects of our service is the fact that we know that your bank doesn't necessarily need the "kitchen sink". We are glad to tailor our offerings to provide the service that you and your bank need. If your bank doesn't need interest rate risk reports, they are gone! Don't need productivity measures at the employee level? We won't produce them. Similarly, if your Board wants reports to be produced "just so", let us see what you need, and we will be glad to generate them for you.

There is no question that juggling reports and analyses for bank management, Board members, and regulators is a difficult job. Contact Capitalytics today to see how we can help you manage the requests and be more productive.