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A De Novo Strategy for the FDIC: Prepaid Insurance Premiums

Posted by Wendell Brock on Thu, Oct 01, 2009

The ongoing wave of bank failures related to the financial crisis continues to impact the health of the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF). At the end of the second quarter, the DIF balance was down to $10.4 billion. Compared to a year ago, when the DIF amounted to $45.2 billion, this is a decline of some 77 percent.

As at-risk banks continue to deteriorate, the DIF's growing loss provisions have simply outpaced accrued and collected premiums, including a special assessment that was levied on insured institutions at the end of the second quarter. Rather than demand another special assessment, the FDIC is trying a new tactic to deal with the fund's depletion: prepaid premiums.

According to an FDIC press release, the FDIC Board "has adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) that would require insured institutions to prepay their estimated quarterly risk-based assessments for the fourth quarter of 2009 and for all of 2010, 2011 and 2012." The prepayments should generate roughly $45 billion in cash, a much-needed infusion for the anemic DIF.

Numbers game

Time Magazine is calling the tactic "an accounting trick," (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1926877,00.html?iid=tsmodule ) but FDIC Chair Sheila Bair sees it as a necessary step in the fund's restoration. The move won't impact banks' profitability, since they won't recognize the expenses any sooner under prepayment. It will impact liquidity, but the FDIC's position is that banks have sufficient cash to absorb these prepayments.

The push for prepayments underscores the FDIC's commitment to manage through this crisis without asking the Treasury or taxpayers to foot the bill.

Assessment increase ahead

The aforementioned NPR also included an assessment increase of three basis points across the board, to be made effective on January 1, 2011.

Topics: FDIC, treasury department, Bank Regulators, Bank Capital, Deposit Insurance, FDIC Insurance Fund, Bank Regulations, Deposit Insurance Fund, Bank Liquiditity, Assessment Plan

Credit Unions Facing Fair Share of Troubles

Posted by Wendell Brock on Thu, Aug 07, 2008

Bank failures get the press, but credit unions are struggling too

The banks and the FDIC may be the ones getting all of the attention, but credit unions and their regulating and insuring entity, the NCUA, are also logging their share of problems. So far this year, a full twenty-one credit unions have failed. Compare this to the number of bank failures, just eight, and one has to wonder why the banks are getting a disproportionate share of media coverage.

The easy answer is the difference in the bottom line. Credit unions generally maintain a far smaller asset value relative to their for-profit counterparts. The largest credit union to undergo an NCUA-managed restructure this year was Cal State 9 Credit Union of California, whose asset base totaled $339 million. Next to the $32-billion IndyMac Bancorp. failure, it's almost understandable why Cal State 9's problems weren't worth the air time. This difference is evident in the total figures as well: the combined asset value of all eight failed banks exceeds $38 billion, while the combined assets of twenty-one failed credit unions add up to only $1.8 billion.

A closer look at the numbers, however, indicates that the current economic crisis may be hitting credit unions harder, despite their smaller size. The largest three failed banks, IndyMac, First National Bank of Nevada and ANB, managed assets totaling $32 billion, $3.4 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively. Remove these three entities from the equation and the remaining five failed banks had an average asset size of about $129 million. That $129 million is far more comparable to the average size of the failed credit union, which is roughly $87 million. Evaluating the data in terms of similar-sized operations, the scale tilts in favor of the banks, with only five failures relative to twenty-one credit union failures.

And still, the system works

Even as financial institutions struggle to recover from fractures in the mortgage, real estate and lending sectors, the federal protections have remained reliable. The deposit insurance provided by the FDIC (banks) and the NCUSIF (credit unions) continues to safeguard customer funds: when an entity fails, the FDIC and NCUA give customers immediate access to all insured deposits. Where a customer's deposits exceed insurance limitations, both the FDIC and NCUA work diligently behind the scenes to recover those funds as quickly as possible. In the days following the IndyMac failure, for example, the FDIC offered to advance customers half of their uninsured deposits immediately. The remaining amounts were transferred to customers in the form of receivership certificates, which will be converted to cash as the bank's assets are sold.  

Panic begets panic

While the customers of financial institutions may be inclined to make a run on their bank or credit union at even a whisper of instability, those panicky actions actually work against the system. The demise of IndyMac is a case in point. Prior to the bank's closure, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer wrote a letter stating his concerns about IndyMac's financial condition. The bank's customers responded by withdrawing $1.3 billion of deposits in eleven days-a swift and pronounced asset depletion that essentially cemented IndyMac's fate. Subsequently, the OTS had no choice but to step in and ask the FDIC take over IndyMac. 

The future may be bright, for some

Unfortunately, the bank and credit union failures are going to continue. Years of enthusiastic underwriting practices combined with troubled economic times are not easily overcome. In the wake of a lending crisis, the future may be brightest for de novo banks that are just now launching operations-nascent entities that aren't weighted down with a legacy portfolio that is marred by bad loans. Also, considering the current real estate market, a new bank enjoys the advantage of writing loans against lower property values. When values start heading back up, those banks will have stronger equity positions. With careful planning and thoughtful underwriting practices, today's de novo banks could be enjoying greater financial stability than most of their competitors for years to come. Given those dynamics, now may be the right time to add a de novo bank investment to your portfolio.

Topics: FDIC, Bank Failure, Community Bank, Bank Regulators, Credit Unions, De Novo Bank Capital, Credit Union Failures, Deposit Insurance, NCUA

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