Small Business, Risk Management and Best Practices

Commercial and Industrial Lending Trends: A Banker's Perspective

Commercial bankers are making strong efforts to return to their roots of C&I and small business lending. Now more than ever, bankers face competition from a variety of non-traditional sources including investment brokers, finance companies, leasing specialists and credit unions. This session provides an updated state of the industry for commercial lenders and a discussion of best practices that are emerging in a highly competitive environment. Included in the discussion:

Strategies banks are employing to gear up C&I and small business lending
New competitive models that are emerging in the broader world of business services
Best practices that banks are employing to increase both the productivity and service quality in commercial lending
Tactics commercial bankers are using to better integrate risk management with their sales and operations functions

Emerging Innovations in Commercial Banking

Are banks really business partners? We like to say that we are, yet our actions often say something very different. We spend more time renewing loans than we do really getting to know our customers. This session will provide Cornerstone's insight about why now is the time to stop talking about being trusted business advisors and start acting like trusted business advisors. Included will be specific examples of commercial banks that have already made that transition by changing the way they do business using strategies and processes that can really impact the total relationship you have with your business customers.

Using Benchmarks to Drive Operational Efficiency

Regardless of what transpires with interest rates, fees, growth and other factors, financial institutions can count on one thing – they will need to be more efficient, more automated, faster in their delivery, and more nimble in markets. This session explores industry best practices in benchmarking and efficiency, with particular focus on the following:

How to concentrate efforts where they will bring the best results
How and when to use peer numbers vs. internal benchmarks
How to differentiate between efficiency opportunities that reduce costs and those that enable more growth
How to tie benchmarking and efficiency initiatives to key strategic goals and desired competencies

A Visit to the Best Practice Branch

While the concept of "best practices" is widely used in banking today, financial institutions can often struggle with translating the idea of best practices into concrete goals and action plans. In this session, Cornerstone Advisors shares a sampling of the best practices we have observed in working with hundreds of financial institutions over the past decade. The functional areas illustrated in this tour will include retail delivery, consumer lending, commercial lending and information technology.

Cornerstone will also share our methodology for developing a "scorecard" that can be used to measure the performance of key groups. Specific topics will include:

Criteria used to measure performance
Finding and using industry peer data for comparison
Characteristics of high performers

Emerging Trends in Financial Services Technology and Delivery

This discussion, positioned for community bank executives, covers the future of technology in the banking industry, strategic industry trends and challenges financial institutions face in implementing new technology. Special issues addressed in the presentation will include:

Keeping up with changing technologies on a community bank budget
Key technologies a bank can use to compete more effectively
Technology staffing challenges
Strategies to better manage outsourcing relationships and new trends in the data processing market
Implementing an effective technology plan
Ensuring a financial payback on technology investments

Making Strategies Meaningful, Making Execution Real

Full of platitudes about being the "premier financial institution," most financial institution strategic plans suffer from boring generalities–without a clear focus on how the company will be different from competitors. Adding to this challenge, the majority of milestones and financial objectives laid out in an organization's strategic plan are never achieved in the time frames originally targeted. In this session, Cornerstone shares war stories from hundreds of strategic planning projects on how to break out from boring strategies and instill the discipline to execute in your institution.

Managing Customers in a Multi-Channel World

While financial institutions have invested millions of dollars in convenient, multi-channel delivery capabilities, they are still struggling to define, measure and manage the overall effectiveness of these channels. This session explores best practices financial institutions are adopting to better optimize and leverage costly delivery channel investments. Learn how banks and credit unions are working to improve the sales, service and efficiency returns along each major delivery channel.

Justifying Technology Investments in a Non ROI World

Increasingly, banks are facing a dilemma when it comes to technology investments - spending is on the rise, but it is getting harder and harder to apply the traditional ROI discipline to justify it. Competitive and regulatory pressures, aging infrastructure, and customer demand all drive technology investments that will require a different kind of justification. This presentation will examine the new paradigm for technology investment justification. Areas of exploration include:

How much are banks spending on technology? How is spending changing?
What types of investments still should require traditional ROI justification?
When classic ROI principles can't be applied, how can banks ensure they are getting the right payback from investments?
What are specific examples of how banks can track "indirect" payoff?

Banking the Next Generation: Strategies and Innovations

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, mobile phones – the tools being used now for social purposes will set the groundwork for how today's youth will expect to do banking in the not-too-distant future. While financial institutions today understand the harsh demographic reality that becoming relevant to and attracting more young customers is critical for future survival, they are struggling to match the delivery and marketing expectations of the X, Y and Z generations. In this discussion Cornerstone will lead the group through an update of trends, innovations and best practices in serving the younger generations.

The State of the Banking Industry: Identifying the Opportunities

2009 is the year in which the banking industry works diligently to climb out of financial and credit risk issues while facing some of the most sweeping regulatory changes since the New Deal. In this session, Cornerstone shares key strategic priorities in this new environment and outlines best practices that lending professionals are adopting to succeed. The presentation includes a discussion of loan growth opportunities, trends in credit risk management, new technology opportunities and ways to improve efficiency.

Getting Beyond ‘Me Too' Banking

Michael Porter said that the key to strategy is being different. And, truthfully, every banker understands that conducting a commodity banking slugfest with other financial institutions will not generate the kinds of returns required to grow and remain independent. But what are the keys to being both different and better than competitors? In this session, Cornerstone will examine banks that have successfully executed unique and profitable strategies and will offer insight into how they did it. Areas to be examined include:

Finding and defending unique market niches
Keeping focused on those initiatives that most support the niches
Creating delivery strategies that add value for the customer and the bank
Putting teeth into the idea of "service"
Training and rewarding employees that execute on this vision

What Your Technology Plan Must Accomplish in the Next 12 Months

This discussion examines the key goals that every bank's technology plan must address in 2009/2010. What are key investments that must be made? How can these investments be justified to a skeptical management team and board? How will the promised payoffs be achieved? This will be an interactive session that will focus on giving attendees key "takeaways" that can be used for their next technology plan.

The Do's and Don'ts of Strategic Planning

As the banking industry becomes more and more commoditized through technology advances and new competitive entrants, developing a unique long-term strategy has become a top priority for directors and management. In this session, Cornerstone shares insights regarding an effective strategic planning process. Included in the discussion will be the role directors play in providing strategic guidance, establishing long-term goals and monitoring plan implementation. In addition, the speaker will outline how senior management should develop strategies that will truly differentiate the institution and how they should align the organization (people, process, technology) with the chosen strategies. Included will be best practice examples of strategic scorecards that can be used by directors to monitor management's performance.

Using Bits and Bytes to Level the Playing Field

Community banks have always relied on customer service and their local community presence to compete against larger financial institutions. However, new channels such as the Web, wireless banking and text messaging are drastically changing both customer behavior and their perception of what good service really is. In this session, Cornerstone examined how community banks can offer the convenience and ease of use these new channels offer while still maintaining a service differentiation.

Managing Technology Costs Without Starving Your Business

With strong budgetary constraints in 2009, bank technology professionals are being asked to do more with less. While cost control is important for the I.T. function, business leaders still expect systems professionals to be responsive to new initiatives and innovations.

Focusing on pragmatic steps banks can take to better manage technology, this session will share best practices for balancing the cost/benefit scales.

Strong prioritization around the bank's strategy
Active vendor management and contract negotiation
Strong technology implementation skills and processes

What's in a Performance: A Comparison of Community Credit Unions to Community Banks

This session will present best practices credit unions can glean from other community institutions from a financial, organizational and product/service standpoint. Discover the key differences that community credit unions should emphasize when competing against local banks. This strategic discussion is based on Cornerstone's work with hundreds of credit unions and banks nationwide.

The Best Practice Lending Organization

New technologies continue to redefine the ways financial institutions make credit decisions and deliver lending products. In this session, you'll hear a review of the organizational best practices that leading institutions are applying to leverage these new technologies. From origination, to underwriting to portfolio management, the speaker will share his experiences working with financial institutions throughout the country on how to organize the lending function and the key roles each lending professional plays in improving efficiency and service levels. Key points to be addressed include:

How to integrate front and back office processes
How to establish internal service level agreements to formalize the "negotiations" between sales and operations
How traditional job descriptions are changing in each lending function
How to build an operating culture that embraces new technology tools

Topics

Top 10 Questions Directors Should Ask About Technology