Strengthening Your Bank’s Resilience: The Critical Role of Portfolio Management and Loan Review Processes

In today’s financial landscape, community financial institutions find themselves navigating through a unique set of challenges. The wave of bank failures throughout 2023 put a spotlight on the volatile side of the industry, making it critical for community institutions to remind the world of their resilience.

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Streamlining Operations and Embracing Innovation: New Market Bank's Success with Teslar Software

New Market Bank is a family-owned community bank that has been serving the South Metro area of Minnesota for over a century. Founded in 1905, the bank has grown to become a $193.4 million institution, with branches in Elko New Market, Lakeville, and Prior Lake. The bank has a rich history of family ownership, with Anita Drentlaw currently serving as CEO, President, and CFO, and representing the fourth generation of her family to lead the bank.

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The Intersection of Innovation and People Strategy to Achieve Business Goals

Banks are not just competing with other banks anymore. It is hard to even know who our competitors are when the landscape is rapidly changing, and customer expectations are being based on experiences from other industries – Amazon, Spotify, Walmart, and Chick-fil-A to name a few.

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Winning the Battle for Deposits

With tightening margins, inflation, and high interest rates, community bankers face not only a challenging lending environment, but also a battle to sustain deposits. Customers are more knowledgeable than ever and are prepared to shop across multiple channels to find the right fit for their deposit needs. So how can community financial institutions look to compete with larger banks and credit unions to attract those customers?

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Don’t wait until it’s too late to prepare your bank for an economic downturn

As Americans are beginning to feel the weight of current inflation, thoughts of a coming recession have been on the minds of many. Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2018 in an attempt to combat inflation. While this announcement has put some minds at ease, there are still many Americans concerned this is just further evidence a recession is coming.

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Community Banks Considering their Options as Big Banks Remove Overdraft Fees

Citibank recently announced plans to eliminate overdraft fees beginning this summer, making it the largest bank thus far to implement this policy, according to the press release. The bank announced it would stop charging overdraft fees, returned item fees, and overdraft protection fees in an effort to be more financially inclusive.

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How Banks Can Think Differently About Optimizing Margins

Net interest margin is a central measure of a financial institution’s long-term success and viability. In an industry that is currently seeing abnormal trends of lower loan originations, excess liquidity, global staff shortages and supply chain issues, closely monitoring margins is of even more importance for banks wanting to avoid falling behind peers.

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Is your communication with customers on par with your peers?

Excellent customer communication is the pinnacle of community banking. However, a new precedent for speed and digital offerings for your commercial customers has been set since the onset of the Paycheck Protection Program. Will people want to go into a bank branch to apply for a commercial loan when they were able to carry out the entire PPP loan process digitally? Now that these digital expectations have been set, there’s no going back. Bankers can’t revert to doing things the same way they did before the pandemic. It’s just not an option.

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Teslar Software Predicts Greater Digitization of Commercial Lending to be Top 2022 Trend

Springdale, Ark., Dec. 6, 2021 – Teslar Software, provider of portfolio management tools that aggregate and automate lending and deposit operations for community financial institutions, today shared commentary on what most significantly impacted the market in 2021 and what financial institutions should watch as we head into 2022.

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Top 9 Questions to Ask When Interviewing Potential Vendors

In the banking industry, innovation and technology are top of mind for community financial institutions who want to stay relevant. As you search for solutions to your CFI’s needs, you will undoubtedly vet many vendors. Give yourself an advantage and be sure to ask the right questions during the discovery process. These are some of the most important questions you should ask when interviewing potential partners to ensure the relationship is going to be a good fit.

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