By: Amanda Roth
Last week, we discussed how pricing with competition is important to ensure sound decision practices are being implemented in the domains of loan pricing and profitability. The extreme of pricing too high for the market can obviously be detrimental to your organization. The other extreme can be just as dangerous.
Pricing for your profitability, regardless of what the competition is charging in your area, has a few potential issues associated with it regarding management of risk. For example, the statistics state you can charge 5 percent in your “A” tier and still be profitable, but the competition is charging 7.5 percent for the same tier. You may be thinking that by offering 5 percent you will attract the “best of the best” to your organization. However, what your statistics may not be showing you is the risk outside of your applicant base. If you significantly change the customers you are bringing in, does your risk increase as well, ultimately increasing the cost associated with each loan? Increased costs will reduce or even eliminate the profitability you had expected.
A second potential issue is setting the expectation within the marketplace. It is often understood with the consumers that when changes occur to the interest rate at the federal level, there will be changes at their local financial institution. These changes are often very small. By undercutting your competition by such an extreme amount, your customers may question any attempts to raise rates more than 50bp, if you do experience increased costs as a result of the earlier situation or any other factors. A safer strategy would be to charge between 6.5 percent and 7 percent, which allows you to obtain some of the best customers, ensure stability within the market, and take advantage of additional profitability while it is available. This is definitely a winning strategy for all — and an important consideration as you develop your portfolio risk management objectives.
