There are differences between credit card bankers and corporate wholesale lenders, but my experience is there are types of bankers in functional roles that transcend the industry. Whether you are a marketing manager at a credit card business like Bank of America or Citi, you and your corporate lender counterpart at PNC are likely the happy ones as new loans book. Who doesn’t want to be a lender?
Operational folks in either business tend to be the resilient ones as they focus on delivering monthly customer service or collection goals. Legal staff and compliance managers are the worriers. Chief Risk Officers are the real worry-warts and rarely fun to challenge to a good game of golf. No Mulligans. Real Scorekeeping. No beer in the cart.
That is what makes today’s read interesting as the American Banker discusses “What’s Keeping Chief Risks Up At Night.” While your credit card line managers contend with the intricies of call blocking for outbound calls or over-saturation of credit card accounts, the industry forum referenced in this article deals with the big picture. All that, and a roomful of worriers.
- The banking industry’s chief worriers have a lot to worry about these days.
- Whether it’s increased competition from nonbank lenders, the rise of e-commerce and its impact on traditional bank clients or the uncertainty created by the pending shift to a new benchmark lending rate, risk executives and board members at big banks see no shortage of threats to their industry
- Competition from nonbanks was top of mind during a panel discussion at a conference
- …banks should be scrutinizing the potential spillover effects of bad loans in the nonbank sector for signs of weakening in certain sectors or certain pockets of the country.
- …also spends a lot of time thinking about the looming shift to a new benchmarkrate on commercial loans and other products, as banks move away from the London interbank offered rate
The panache of a good marketing person? No way. This is dry, serious, and focused. Money2020 this is not.
- “What is the shelf life of their existing business models? How do we use our data and analytics to determine the longevity of their shelf life when we make decisions — credit decisions and business decisions?”
- … panelists nonetheless said that bank executives and directors are ultimately responsible for spotting patterns of misbehavior at their companies.
Interesting, but keep me a good old operations job any day! Operational challenges are fun to deal with. Worrying is no fun.
Overview by Brian Riley, Director, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
