What others are saying
Testimonials
What’s happening in the industry today can have an impact on your business tomorrow. We’re here to provide the information you need and the insights you want from people you can trust. Come back often as we update frequently.
What Bankers Say
We were one of the first banks to join the [IntraFi] network. We realized that CDARS was a game changer - one that would give banks like ours not just competitive equality with large financial companies, but a real competitive advantage in attracting local customers.
Through products like CDARS and ICS, community development banks attract deposits at four times the level of other community banks. That translates into loans to small businesses, loans for mortgages and home improvement, loans for revitalization projects - loans that otherwise would not be made.
Reciprocal deposits are popular because they tend to be associated with multi-million-dollar depositors, enabling banks to attract deposits in large chunks with lower acquisition and maintenance costs as costs tend to be spread over much larger deposit amounts. Moreover, they tend to come from local customers at rates that are more in line with local pricing norms. They also tend to come from customers who are more likely to be interested in a broader, more long-term relationship that may include mortgages, credit cards, and other profit-generating services.
Reciprocal deposits help us better manage our balance sheet. We can more easily determine what to do with excess liquidity and easily follow through on those decisions which lowers our cost of funds and increases our profitability. Most importantly, reciprocal deposits give us another way to further our support for our communities.
I would highly recommend IntraFi to other banks. They've been such an incredible resource to us, both in good times and in bad, helping us with resources to help our customers. I also love the fact that I can be completely honest with them and transparent about our business situation. They're not competing with me. They're there to help me keep my customers, rather than to take them away.
IntraFi is a different kind of fintech. IntraFi partners with banks and provides solutions for banks. In fact, it weaves the nation's banking industry together in order to provide increased deposit insurance coverage and this ability to gain wholesale deposits. And so [IntraFi is] certainly not a competitor with banks.
Best quality, in my eyes, is their responsiveness. Excellent customer service.
Customer support is awesome. They are knowledgeable and great communicators.
[IntraFi] gives us a lot of advantages that some of the largest institutions may have today so that we can provide some of our more sophisticated borrowers with the products and services that they really want.
We enjoy being able to replace repos and letters of credit, as well as reducing our need for collateral, with [ICS and CDARS].
Love the availability of the marketing materials [for financial institutions to use for free when marketing to end customers].
The people are great! So patient and helpful.
It’s fair to say that [IntraFi's] offerings provide a lifeline to minority-owned banks by enabling our members to attract large deposits from civic-minded and socially motivated investors and to put those deposits to work in communities we serve.
IntraFi can be so helpful to banks in terms of their liability management. It can help them attract and maintain their deposits, typically from their local customers, and it can help them earn fee income in addition. I think one of the great things about it is [that] it helps community banks, particularly, compete with the largest banks for deposits and compete with money market mutual funds. And so this is something that's so important to community banks in terms of having the money they need to lend in their communities.
Having access to the kind of scale that IntraFi provides us with is why our partnership is so successful. The ability to access large amounts of funding so quickly is essential. We have also been able to use IntraFi’s solutions to access funding on good terms as far as interest rates which is very important to the bank. IntraFi excels in customer service and responsiveness making doing business with them easy.
With the help of [IntraFi] and access they provide to multi-million-dollar FDIC insurance, we’ve been able to build loyal, large-dollar relationships.
[IntraFi] has been a big partner with us in order to fund growth.
As other institutions started to become more aggressive in raising deposit rates, ICS and CDARS made it easy to accommodate rate-sensitive customers on a case-by-case basis without cannibalizing our other deposits.
What Depositors Say
We need things as simple as simple can be. That’s how we started with [ICS and CDARS]. Been with them since 2008.
[My boss] has an ‘on top of it’ philosophy. [ICS] gives us a single statement and we know we’re protected, and where the money has been transferred to. The service was made for someone like him.
I was looking for a flexible investment vehicle that I could use for a special need we had. With ICS and CDARS, I found safety, flexibility, and yield - all in one place!
I like that I can log in [to the ICS Depositor Control Panel] and see where funds are and can show a client to explain how more than $250K is insured. It’s nice to pull up a website and show them where their money is, even if in 25 different banks overnight.
We face the important, but cumbersome task of making certain that our deposits are eligible for protection. To do so, we required our bank to pledge millions of dollars of collateral. It was our responsibility to track the changing values of that collateral every day. Now, thanks to [our bank], we discovered ICS. By placing our funds through ICS, our funds are eligible for FDIC protection beyond $250,000 and earn interest - both of which really benefit us and local taxpayers. The best part is that Capitol Bank can use our deposits to fund local lending and economic growth. And the recurring burden of tracking collateral values is gone. The service is truly a benefit for us.
ICS came in and its been amazing. And we’re getting more money out of the sweep than money markets originally. Sweep makes so much sense. We cut checks once a week. We don't have to think about it [managing the process]. It has helped to solidify our relationship with our bank. Also I have been with lots of banks here [at my chosen local bank] I can get someone on the phone at any time. Don’t have to have to talk to 18 different people. I can get one person. And when I get someone on the phone, they're there.
. . . You know, we've gotten a little bit more sophisticated since I've come. They used to make about 50 to 100 grand a year in interest. Last year, or this year ending June 30, we probably will make almost half a million [while protecting our investment with FDIC insurance].
Our school system has utilized the CDARS service for years and is very pleased about the addition of the ICS service. With CDARS, we have access to FDIC insurance on our funds that are invested for a longer timeframe while meeting our investment policy mandates and earning CD-level returns. With ICS, we can protect and invest our funds on a shorter-term basis while earning a return. CDARS and ICS combined provide us with an efficient cash management solution.
Upon joining the county treasurer’s office, I was intrigued to learn that a portion of the county’s funds were placed through CDARS. I quickly appreciated the security and ease of placing large deposits through a single bank while keeping the money FDIC insured, and have since added the ICS serivce as well. CDARS and ICS free up the capital of smaller banks to finance community growth while still allowing them to accept our larger deposits. We can support the prosperity of the community while investing the taxpayers’ money competitively and safety through a community bank. A winning combination.
If I am going to take money from investors, it would be a fiduciary lapse not to use these products (ICS & CDARS)
Great partners! Critical to achieving our on-balance-sheet deposit goals.
The IntraFi product protects our funds, earns a competitive rate, and does not cost us the significant time and effort required if we were to do this ourselves.
The previous Treasurer kept all the money in local government pools, and then had pledged securities as collateral. All of the money was not local. They didn't have any local banks. So what I did when I came in as treasurer was analyze those accounts and move a large portion of our money to local community banks. [Our city] is the state capital, but it is a very small town so to speak. Now, having that money in municipal local banks was important for me because then the local banks can then lend that money out to local businesses. I worked for 25 years in banking and understand that concept, so it was important to me that the municipality helped support the local financial institutions. Without IntraFi that would not have been possible.
Tell me a reason not to be doing this(reciprocal deposits)? There isn’t one.
There is just no downside. This is one of those few products (ICS & CDARS) that work as advertised and there are no gotchas.
We were mainly interested in ICS for the security." “You know, one less thing to worry about. But the time savings have been huge, too. For many companies, this would probably be the main selling point—most people think they need relationships with ten other banks to get insurance coverage. They don’t.”
I will never again bank with a bank that is not part of the IntraFi network.
An important motivator in our using a single bank is that the business is a cash business, and every day we must make trips to the bank, as the company collects money from customers on a daily basis. Many still pay in checks. Having one bank to work with [using ICS and CDARS] makes it much easier.
