Muni Revolution?

Tax-free supplies and demand are evolving

by Jim Reber, President and CEO, ICBA Securities

However you slice it, municipal bonds have a big impact on community bank investment performance—even if you don’t own any. That’s because your bank’s collection of bonds is destined to be in the bottom of the rankings amongst its peers, unless you own some.

This, of course, is not news. For decades, a hallmark of high bond portfolio performance is a large weighting of tax-free securities. Among the investments that community banks are permitted to own, munis tend to be the highest yielding. There are several reasons for this.

First, they’re not guaranteed by the federal government or one of its agencies. (That doesn’t necessarily indicate they don’t have really good credit quality.) Second, munis have a limited supply, which could mean they have a scarcity value that makes them expensive but instead means they have somewhat lesser liquidity than other sectors. Third, and most importantly, munis have the longest durations of any category in the portfolio, which is mainly a function of a perpetually steep yield curve.

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Remember also that the yield your bank earns on its tax-free securities is driven by its marginal tax bracket. The higher the tax rates, the bigger the tax-equivalent yields. This means S Corporations have higher yields on their munis than do C Corporations, although all tax-advantaged assets have seen their yields drop since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect in 2017.

For example, a C Corporation that owned a muni at a tax-free yield of 2.75 percent prior to tax reform would have been earning a tax-equivalent yield of about 4.17 percent. Now, that same bond’s tax-equivalent yield is about 3.45 percent. For S Corporations, the drop is similarly painful: from about 4.55 percent to 3.87 percent.

In response, banks have been right-sizing their muni holdings. For the one-year period ending Sept. 30, 2018, the typical community bank bond portfolio decreased its muni sector weighting from 28 percent of the total to 23 percent. It’s likely more shifting will occur as bonds get called and mature.

Legislation implications
The 2017 Act will also affect municipal supply in the coming years. Attendant to tax reform was the elimination of the ability for muni issuers to “pre-refund” their outstanding debt any longer than 90 days before their call dates. Prior practice saw bonds being issued as long as three years in advance of outstanding issues they were to replace. What this meant for muni issuance in 2018 was that only about 31 percent of 2018-dated bonds were for refinancings of older bonds. That number was 74 percent just two years ago.

Also, the largest two years of muni issuance in history were 2009 and 2010, because the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 created several new classes of municipal bonds and expanded the size limit for Bank Qualified bonds. These provisions only applied to those issued in the two years, so there was a lot of paper printed in that time frame. Many of the longer-dated maturities had 10-year call provisions embedded in them, which means that 2019 and 2020 will see a lot of bonds get called. Also, the entire muni market has been stuck at about $3.7 trillion for the past five years, and there are actually fewer bonds outstanding now than in 2010.

Built-in demand
Ironically, even though banks are shedding some of their munis, there should be decent liquidity and stability in the muni market. A lot of this is owing to robust demand from the retail sector, which owns about two-thirds of all municipal bonds. Individual tax rates didn’t change much in the 2017 Act, so those individuals’ tax-equivalents didn’t change much, either. The aforementioned limited amount of outstanding muni debt will also help keep a relative floor under muni prices, particularly in the early months of 2019.

To be sure, banks have plenty of income these days to shield from the tax man. Industry earnings were up year-over-year by more than 30 percent through Sept. 30. By most indications, 2019 should be a solid year for community bank performance. You can help ensure it by actively managing and updating your municipal bond holdings to fit your institution’s needs.

Jim Reber is president and CEO of ICBA Securities and can be reached at 800-422-6442 or jreber@icbasecurities.com.

Vining Sparks, ICBA Securities’ exclusive broker, , offers a host of tools to help community banks manage their municipal bond portfolios. For more information, contact your Vining Sparks sales rep or visit www.viningsparks.com.

Proposed SBA Loan Changes

SBA has proposed changes to various regulations governing selected business loan programs. To follow are some of the most critical proposals:

Personal Resource Test – Certain owners with liquid assets above a stated threshold would be required to inject cash into the applicant small business to reduce the SBA loan amount.

Limiting Fees – The SBA would impose a limit on the maximum fee collected for servicing, limit the maximum fee an agent may collect, modify the extraordinary servicing fee limit, and eliminate the so-called Dual Agency exception.

Affiliation Rule – Designed to simplify eligibility determinations while reducing costs and processing time, proposed revisions would modify regulations for determining affiliation under SBA’s business loan programs and its surety bond guarantee program.

We have been closely following the development of these proposed changes to SBA regulations, so that we can provide our clients with the best interpretation and implementation of SBA requirements. Please call your Account Executive for any clarifications.