Celent Banking Newsletter, November 2011
From the Senior Vice President
What can banks learn from credit unions?
Celent published two reports (It Takes More Than a Village and It Takes More Than a Village Redux) that confirmed what many of you already knew: banks under $100 million have been disappearing, and the trend is not changing in the least. What you might not have known was why this was happening. Small banks have a markedly higher efficiency ratio, which means they are less efficient. Celent uncovered the same trend in credit unions in the report Tipping Scale: Credit Union Consolidation.
Credit unions have different standard asset tiers, so we normalized the tiers and compared credit union efficiency ratios (calculated by Celent) to efficiency ratios of similar-size banks. What did we discover? Comparable credit unions are more efficient by about 10 points. That is a profoundly lower cost structure. The great irony is that credit unions, as a matter of course, do not use efficiency ratio as a metric. Banks certainly do.
Celent examined why this is the case in EfficienCU: An Examination of Bank and Credit Union Efficiency Ratios by Asset Tier. In these cost-conscious days, I highly recommend that banks read this report to understand the drivers behind credit union efficiency and how banks might be able to duplicate them.
Bart Narter
Senior Vice President
Chart of the Month
From the Celent report: EfficienCU: An Examination of Bank and Credit Union Efficiency Ratios by Asset Tier
Celent Published Reports
- What’s in Your Mobile Wallet? Winning the Battle for Mobile at the Retail POS
- State of Remote Deposit Capture 2011: Signs of a Maturing Market
- EfficienCU: An Examination of Bank and Credit Union Efficiency Ratios by Asset Tier
- Cloud Computing in the Japanese Financial Services Industry
- Innovations in Mobile at Finovate
- SEPA Redux: Understanding How We Got Here
- The SEPA Ripple Effect: Impacting a Non-European Country Near You Soon
Research in Progress
- Core Banking Solutions for Large, Midsize and Small Banks: A Global Perspective
- Financial Technology Startups 2011
- Corporate Mobile Banking
- E-invoicing Market
Events
Celent Banking Event: What Corporate Mobile Banking Will Really Mean For Your Bank
Senior Analysts
Banking Group
January 25, 2012
Boston, MA
For more information on Celent webinars and speaking engagements, please see our Events page.
Participate in Celent Research
Celent is now accepting nominations for our 2012 Model Bank Awards. Banks may nominate themselves using our nomination form at http://celentmodelbank.com. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2011.