-
JPMorgan Chase laid out a careful plan for a better 2014 on Tuesday, as it tries to recover from a year spent paying for past mistakes. The bank is hoping that more expense cuts, improved technology and a greater reliance on wealth management will boost its future growth.
February 25 -
The Minneapolis bank's agreement to buy 94 RBS-owned branches in Chicago is the biggest deal that a big bank has pursued in awhile, and observers will watch the approval process closely for any signs that regulators are warming to the idea of acquisitions by large banks.
January 7 -
Royal Bank of Scotland's U.S. subsidiary is adding staff in lending and wealth management under new CEO Bruce Van Saun as it looks looks to boost its loan portfolio and improve its revenues ahead of its widely anticipated public stock offering.
October 4
Retail banking these days brings to mind the
Low interest rates, a soft economic recovery and new regulations are continuing to shrink the stakes or at least the current profit and revenue growth in retail banking. Now financial companies of all sizes are struggling to increase the returns that they can eke out of their remaining operations, while trying to elbow their competitors out of the same turf.
"We face enormous headwinds, as all of our peers do," Cece Stewart, the retiring president of U.S. consumer and commercial operations at Citigroup (NYSE:C), said
Stewart's second-in-command, Will Howle, is one of the senior executives scheduled to speak in Orlando this week at
These executives will be discussing some of the same big questions that retail bankers have wrestled with for years now, including how to manage head counts, branch networks and product pricing. Here are three hard facts retail bankers need to face as they continue those perennial discussions:
1. Branches are
Despite decreased foot traffic from increasingly tech-savvy customers, some of the country's biggest banks have spent the past few years continuing to build even more branches. That appears to be about to change, at least at the industry bellwether that is JPMorgan Chase (JPM); last month, the country's biggest bank abandoned its two-year plans to build another 100 new branches and said it would switch to "
Many banks are now using their remaining locations to sell financial planning, asset management and related (highly lucrative) services to their wealthiest customers. At the same time, banks have dropped products they once offered to less affluent customers, including short-term credit. Earlier this year, several companies, including Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp (USB) and Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB), stopped offering "deposit advances," or their versions of payday loans, after regulators tightened restrictions on them.
"It's not obvious to me what the replacement product" is, Andy Harmening, a Bank of the West Senior Executive Vice President (and a speaker at this week's conference), said in a
2. Technology can solve some problems, but it creates others.
Banks are trying to keep their customers happy and keep costs down with an array of online and mobile banking technology, from bill payment and check deposits to person-to-person payments. Some banks have recently made bigger bets on technology; BBVA, for example, last month announced
But banks are struggling to innovate quickly enough to keep up with their outside competition. From Google and Apple to Bitcoin and even the U.S. Postal Service, nonbanks are jumping into businesses once controlled by the traditional financial services industry. That has accelerated the competition beyond its already-fierce internal wars among banks of all sizes.
Big banks are trying to keep more of their wealthy customers' business in-house, in part by developing new products. Wells Fargo, for example, is developing new credit cards, while it has joined JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and many smaller rivals in trying to bulk up in wealth management. Small banks aren't completely sidelined, either. For example, the $2.2 billion-asset Seacoast National Bank (SBCF) in Stuart, Fla., has been hiring financial advisors and expanding a luxury rewards program to attract more business from its wealthiest customers.
"Our sweet spot on the investment management side is that $500,000 to $3 million range, which is underserved right now by our regional and national competition," Thomas L. Hall, Seacoast's executive vice president of wealth management and private banking, said
3. Acquisitions could help, in theory but don't hold your breath for a better M&A market.
Banks could theoretically solve some of their retail banking problems by buying or selling each other; for example, the easiest way for some superregionals to compete with retail behemoths like JPMorgan or Bank of America would be to try to match their scale through acquisitions. But bankers and potential dealmakers are pretty pessimistic about conditions in the near future. Regulators are unlikely to bless any large-scale mergers in any sort of timely fashion, they say, and there are too many questions about the risk that potential buyers could be acquiring along with any operations.
"Buyer beware," in
"It's not that we would mind it. It would have to be the right deal for the right reasons," says Greg Braca, head of corporate and specialty banking at TD Bank, adding, "If you can't figure out a de novo strategy, where you can't take share [without a deal], you have a broken model."