Deposits Webinar - Avoiding Hidden Risks in Interest Rate and Liquidity Risk Management

I had the opportunity yesterday (July 2025) to present a webinar to nCino's Portfolio Analytics clients on a topic that continues to be very relevant, and some would say urgent: Know Your Deposits: Avoiding Hidden Risks in Interest Rate and Liquidity Risk Management.

Too often, we still rely on static categories like “core” vs. “non-core” or “sticky” vs. “non-sticky”, but those binary labels just don’t hold up in today’s environment. Digital banking, rate-shopping apps, real-time transfers (not to mention the Stablecoin potential) have made deposits more mobile, and more sensitive, than ever before.

We talked through:

• Why the old ways of modeling deposits can hide real vulnerabilities.

• How a “stickiness score” based on behavioral indicators can better align with actual depositor behavior.

  
  

• What SVB taught us about the danger of unchallenged assumptions (and why “stable until they’re not” isn’t a strategy).

• How stress testing can evolve from a regulatory checkbox to a strategic tool for discovery.

• Techniques for segmenting deposits in ways that actually matter (e.g. account tenure, channel, additional products/relationships, transaction behavior, rate type, and more).

As we noted in the session - with a little help from Dilbert and George Box - the goal of modeling isn’t to predict the future with precision, but to uncover where your assumptions might break down and where real vulnerabilities could emerge.

Ultimately, your assumptions are your model. That’s especially true when it comes to deposits. If we don't validate and challenge those assumptions, we’re modeling a version of reality that may not exist.

Big thanks to the team at nCino for having me, and to all the attendees who joined the session. If you want to see the deck or explore how some of these ideas might fit your institution, feel free to reach out.