Why Is It So Important to Hold On to Low Cost Deposits [VIDEO]

The scramble for low-cost deposits isn’t slowing down—it’s intensifying. And the banks that win aren’t the ones throwing rate at the problem. They’re the ones who build systems, skill sets, and confidence inside their teams so low-cost deposits show up week after week, account after account.

In this video, Roxanne Emmerich dismantles the myth that today’s environment makes low-cost deposit growth impossible. Top 5% performers are doing it right now—bringing in multimillion-dollar checking accounts and full relationships without resorting to promotional rate gimmicks.

You’ll discover:

• Why growing non-interest-bearing deposits is “Christmas every day” for margin and profitability
• The real reason most banks fail at organic deposit growth—and why brochures and billboards won’t fix it
• What top 5% performers know (and do) that consistently attracts large, low-cost relationships

Your competition is already calling on your customers. This video shows you how to get ahead of them—fast.

Watch now. 

When everybody is competing for a scarce item, it gets a little bit hard unless you get better at it. And that’s exactly what we need to do with low-cost deposits. Let’s face it: There is no end in sight to the competition for low-cost deposits. And even during a time when your bank is flush with deposits, you should be actively increasing your non-interest-bearing deposits as a percentage of total deposits, because that’s like Christmas every single day.

Every month you wake up and go, “Everything we charge for a loan is profit. This is good.” And yet most banks don’t really have a process, nor do they have the people skilled to know how to bring in low-cost deposits over and over again. So they’re doing billboards, they’re doing advertisements, they’re opening CD accounts and giving them away with these ridiculous interest rates as a part of this—and they’re not understanding that there’s a whole bunch of customers out there that are just not that rate sensitive, but they sure want someone to make a difference in their lives.

And they want somebody who, when they come out to their business, knows how to make a meaningful difference for them that so outweighs what they would be getting on an interest-bearing account.

But does your team have the skill set? Does your team have the confidence? Listen, one of the things I know for sure—because I’ve had the great honor for decades of working with many top five percenters, those who get to and stay in the top five percent of performance—is this: One of the things they have mastery of is how to bring in low- or no-cost deposits.

It is a system. It is a skill set. It is hard.

But then once people know how to do it, they bring in one account after another after another. I called a bank CEO recently because I heard that one of our recent graduates of the Accredited Banking Professional Program brought in a fourteen-million-dollar checking account of a business in their area. And this was a bank that was a two-hundred-million-dollar bank. This was kind of a big deal.

And not only did they bring in that account, but they brought in the entire relationship. I think they said they had fourteen cross-sells. So I called to congratulate the CEO, and the CEO said, “That’s nothing. My people bring in a two- or three-million-dollar checking account every single week.”

Don’t tell me it can’t be done, because there are people doing it. But they’re not doing it by slugging their brochures and doing the “bada bing, bada boom, what-keeps-you-up-at-night, feel-felt-found” sales training. Let me assure you: They’re only going to come off as someone who will never be invited back to the table unless they bring their skill sets up to be a top five percenter—so that your bank can be a top five percent performer. Deposits aren’t going to get any easier.

This is going to go on for a while. But you can get a lot better, and you can do it quickly. But you’ve got to get into action because your competitors are coming at you—and your depositors—quickly.