Entry Details

About the Entry

Category: 
All Content > Enterprise News Story > Northeast

Title of entry: 
How interest rate risk sneaked up on dozens of community banks

Issue or Publication date:
3/27/2023

Publication name: 
American Banker

Publishing/parent company: 
Arizent

View Website home page:
https://www.americanbanker.com/

Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

This story started as a spreadsheet the day after Silicon Valley Bank failed. It was a test of the reporter’s ability to examine data, but it snowballed into the toughest story he’s worked on. Dozens of banks feared the spreadsheet, which examined whether some beyond SVB had opened themselves up to similar risks. One trade group called the story "egregiously misleading."


The intense pushback meant the story needed extra care. The reporter is neither a banker nor a regulator, so he reached out to even more outside experts, bank consultants and lawyers to make sure the analysis was fair. A regulatory post-mortem would soon show that Federal Reserve officials received a briefing ahead of SVB’s failure with similar findings. Months after March’s panic, bank supervisors are still asking about the same issues the story presented.


The story took several days and late nights to write. He did get a brief and surprisingly peaceful break on a Friday night — but only because he took his dog to the emergency room. Each fact was checked meticulously, knowing that the smallest error would call into question the reporter’s credibility. Each word, too, needed to be written with care. It needed to lay out how risks built up at some banks, without leading to a full-on panic and sparking the next financial crisis. It helped that the reporter took the time to listen to the bankers involved. Indeed, one who was not listed thanked him after publication for having "educated the public without panic."

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https://www.americanbanker.com/news/how-interest-rate-risk-sneaked-up-on-dozens-of-community-banks

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