The Wrong—And Right—Way To Go About Loan Growth

What if you’re going about loan growth in all the wrong ways?

Now, you’re probably not doing it all wrong. But there might be some ways that you could be doing it a whole lot better. That’s because all loan growth is not the same. The quality of the deals that you’re bringing in and the desirability of those deals—because of their creditworthiness and their willingness to pay premium pricing—matters a lot. And yes, strategically speaking, most banks are not addressing that correctly.

Everyone thinks all loans are the same in terms of quality

They think that if they walk into your office and say, “Hey, Boss, we can do this deal as long as we match the rate. And by the way, the quality isn’t that good, so we’re taking some risks here,” that it’s the same as bringing in a high-quality credit, at premium pricing, with all of their business. There’s a big difference between doing it the one way and doing it the other. Sadly, for many people—and it’s not their fault—they’re still doing it the old way. It’s the way that I did it back when I started as a lender because I watched to see what all the guys did just like they do now. If they had a briefcase, I took my briefcase out, too. When they got in their car and called on people, I did the same thing. 

That’s what I thought being a commercial and agricultural lender was until I learned that there was a much better way to do this. It’s to identify your next best customers—strategically—by figuring out the psychographics and firmographics and then making sure that you build a system where you close 90% of the time, even though they love their current bank, and even though they’re going to pay you more.

This is the part where I get little letters from people saying, “Oh, Roxanne, you must never have been in banking. You don’t know anything.” 

Well, in fact, I have been in banking, and I did run a bank. And I do work with some of the very highest performing banks in America. And many of them had been in the bottom quartile before we started working together. So I believe, very adamantly, that you can command premium pricing when you have the right loan growth strategies in place. And I also believe that most banks, and it’s not their fault, just don’t have the right strategies.

I hope you can join me at the BEST BANKS IN AMERICA™ SUPER CONFERENCE. We’re going deep into how to command premium pricing and get better loan growth by changing the strategies you use and how to go about it. 

In addition to the day we’ll be spending on loan growth mastery, we’ll also be having all of the Best Banks in AmericaTM share their stories of how they command excellence in every area in their bank. I promise you, this is information you won’t want to miss. 

I hope to see you in Naples, Florida, on April 21 and 22.

– Roxanne Emmerich

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board.

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April 21-22, 2022. It’s the ONLY Conference for top-performing banks—and those that aspire to join them! Register now!