Blog: Trusts And Estates

Industry trend pieces usually list technologies. The forces actually determining which community banks are independent in five years are older and less interesting than that: what deposits cost, what loans yield, who else is competing for both, and whether the institution is large enough to absorb fixed costs that keep rising.

This post covers those business forces. Our companion post on

This post covers credit risk at the portfolio level — the policy, limits, authorities, and oversight that govern lending as a whole. Two companion posts handle the transaction level: our guide to commercial lending underwriting covers analyzing an individual credit, and the piece on problem loans covers what happens when one deteriorates.

The distinction matters because these fail ...