RESEARCH BY KBRG: Small Community Banks have more than $900MM in Excess Cost SUMMARY OF FINDINGS Banking regulations are complex and continuously evolving. Today’s financial institutions must adapt to stay in compliance, but at what cost? Costs to be compliant continue to grow inefficiently due to the reactive nature of regulatory feedback and enforcement. The finance and compliance functions in today’s banks are struggling to maintain operational efficiency while ensuring regulatory expectations are met. KBRG performed an assessment of its proprietary metric – “SET” (Total Salary cost as a % of Total Non-Interest Expense) on all 1,723 US Banks and Credit Unions with assets from $100MM to just under $1BN (as of FY’16). The research of the SET metric showed the following: Approx. 1,214, or 70% of the total, have an excess of $900MM in cost within their current organizations. Excess cost increased by more than $52MM over fiscal year 2015. The SET Metric, a relative measure of salary expense, continued to grow at the same pace of total non-interest expense. On the other hand, non-interest expense has been steadily growing greater than 6% annually since 2014. Total assets in the meantime have grown by ~6%, equal to total expense and the SET metric growth rate. Total number of full-time employees (where data is available) has been steadily increasing over the last three years, with over 220,000 employed at the end of 2016. The average employee was making almost $70,000/yr. in salary in 2016, an increase of roughly 3% over 2015. The average bank; held total assets of $310MM, had ~62 full-time employees with an average annual salary of $69.8K, total non-interest expense of $10.7MM, a SET metric of 51.9% and $0.6MM in excess cost.
Karlo A. Bustos
For more information:
CEO & Chief Analyst
Phone: +1 617-898-7476
Email: kbustos@kbrg.co
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