Bank Ranking & Technology 2009
July/August
Technology in Tough Times: Using Web-Based Quoting to Enhance Customer Relationships
Enhancing the Customer Relationship
By Joseph Moore
A key to getting a technological bang for your buck in tough times is to be both focused and creative — focus on specific high-value challenges, and creatively use existing mature technology to meet them. Management is unlikely to support massive long-term projects, however worthy, where the investment up front is high and the payoff is years out and uncertain. Here, we’ll look at one such high-value/relatively low-risk application — focused Web-based quoting.
System Configurability Helps Equipment Finance Companies Adapt to Change
By Gerry Perham
In today’s marketplace, adapting to change almost always requires system adaptation. Today’s most powerful systems can help equipment finance companies achieve the necessary flexibility more rapidly, and at much lower expense, through customer configurability.
Today’s CFOs: Rising Stars in Recessionary Times
By Daniel H. Ransdell
Eventually when the textbooks are written about this current recession there will be a lot of chapters that feature the winners and losers. There will be the ones led by smart CFOs, who broke the code and advanced smart financing solutions, including leasing options to acquire technology during the recession. These decisions today would be seen as pivotal in positioning their companies for growth during the inevitable rebound in the global marketplace.
Wells Fargo Financial Leasing
An Acquisition & Internal Restructuring Bring Reese to the Helm
By Christopher Moraff
In 2002, Tim Reese and three colleagues started Greater Bay Capital in a furnitureless office with a handful of salespeople. Five years later, when Wells Fargo scooped it up as part of its acquisition of Greater Bay Bancorp, the company was doing in excess of $200 million in business a year and its tiny staff had grown to 60 employees. Reese now leads 400 employees as head of Wells Fargo Financial Leasing, and he’ll tell you he feels pretty lucky.
Attention Salespeople
Eight Steps to Gain Satisfaction
By Linda P. Kester
Frustration is a normal emotional response to being unable to fill a need. It’s a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unresolved problems. Linda Kester provides eight steps to alleviate the frustration many salespeople experience.
The Problematic ‘Middle of the Road’ in Your Job Search
A Biker, a Squirrel & an Epiphany
By Michael A. Toglia
Molloy Associates’ Michael Toglia returns this issue to relate how a near miss on his motorcycle caused him to have an epiphany about his view of the current employment market. Sometimes, he says, it just doesn’t pay to stay in the middle of the road.
Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities: Dafaults and Workouts
By Ellen R. Marshall
The very structure of many commercial loans, and the relationship between rents collected and mortgage payments, have the effect of deferring loan defaults for a while. Signs are beginning to appear, though, that delinquencies are sure to accelerate. When they do, there will be an avalanche of defaults, of which perhaps 20% will be of loans that are now held in commercial mortgage-backed securities trusts falling under the general description of “commercial mortgage-backed securities” (CMBS).
Understanding Fixtures and Special Priority Rules in Lease Default Claims
By Kenneth P. Weinberg
In a rough economy, lessors are more frequently faced with competing claims against equipment on lease to defaulted customers. Some of these claims come from landlords or mortgagees who have an interest in the premises on which the leased equipment is located. Such claims can be particularly troublesome if the leased equipment may be considered fixtures under state law.
