In addition to those detailed in our article, Commercial Lending…After The Crisis: Back To Basics,
here are two more hard lessons learned from the financial crisis:
Now that we have digested the fact that most banks’ loan portfolios are weaker today than they were two years ago, it’s a good time to review a few of the basics of commercial lending.
One result at the credit crisis that has rocked this nation’s financial system over the past year has been an abundance of distressed debt for sale in the commercial marketplace. Well, one man’s trash may indeed be another man’s treasure, since a growing number of firms are interested in purchasing this debt.
The competitive landscape for community banks today looks very different than it did just a year or two ago. The fallout from the subprime mortgage collapse and ensuing credit crisis has claimed its share of nonbank credit providers, such as mortgage bankers and specialists, captive finance companies and monoline credit card companies. Many of these lenders arose because they could take their products to the secondary market, but the turmoil in securitization has dried up many of their funding sources, either putting them under severe constraints or out of business entirely.
Hiring and retaining qualified commercial lenders remains one of the biggest challenges for many community banks. In the past, large commercial banks served as the “farm system” for training and developing new lenders, and community banks were often able to recruit well-trained lenders from them. But with fewer big banks now providing this kind of training, there are fewer qualified lenders – who possess both sales/relationship and technical credit and underwriting skills – for community banks to choose from.
