Banks: Five CEO Conversations

The useful thing about the latest advice for business owners is that it treats banking as an operating system, not a place to park cash. In a Long Island Business News piece published April 5, Bart Kerner of Dime Community Bank argues that CEOs should be having five specific conversations with their banker right now: about supply-chain risk, liquidity, currency exposure, cash reserves, and contingency planning. The point is not abstract prudence. It is that a lot of businesses are still running with a 2019 playbook in a 2026 economy. (libn.com) That mismatch is easy to miss because the headline numbers do not scream crisis. The Federal Reserve held its benchmark federal funds target range at 3.5% to 3.75% on March 18. Rates are no longer at their 2023 peak. But bank credit has not snapped back into being cheap or easy. In the Fed’s January 2026 survey of loan officers, banks said they had tightened standards for commercial and industrial loans to firms of all sizes, and they expected loan quality for small firms to deteriorate over 2026. (federalreserve.gov) That is why the first real conversation is not “Can I borrow?” It is “What breaks first?” Kerner starts with supply chains because tariffs, shipping delays, and political shocks now hit working capital before they hit strategy decks. The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey found that 48% of small employer firms sourced at least some inputs from outside the United States, and more than four in 10 said tariff-related cost increases were a financial challenge. Among firms with foreign inputs, most reported higher prices, 76% passed along at least some of those costs, and 60% absorbed at least some of them too. That combination is brutal. It compresses margins and weakens demand at the same time. (libn.com) Once costs get jumpier, liquidity stops being a finance-office detail. It becomes survival gear. Kerner’s second prompt is whether a company already has a line of credit in place before it needs one. That matters because banks are usually happiest to extend flexibility to borrowers who do not look desperate yet. The SBA has leaned into the same logic. Its 7(a) Working Capital Pilot program, updated this year, is built around monitored lines of credit and explicitly describes lines as one of the most flexible and affordable ways for businesses to manage working capital, with interest charged only when the line is in use. The program allows facilities up to $5 million and is designed to support borrowing against receivables, inventory, and even transaction-based needs earlier in the sales cycle. (libn.com) That leads to the third and fourth conversations, which sound technical until they suddenly are not. Kerner flags foreign-exchange risk and cash-buffer planning because many owners still think of volatility as something that happens to public companies. It does not. If you buy inventory abroad, invoice across borders, or rely on a narrow vendor base, exchange rates and payment timing can move your cash position faster than your income statement shows. Kerner points to tools like forward contracts and currency options. Those are not exotic bets. They are ways to stop one bad move in a currency market from turning a profitable order into a loss. (libn.com) The deeper issue is that small firms are entering this stretch with less confidence about growth than about endurance. The Fed’s 2026 report on employer firms found that expectations for revenue and employment growth fell to their lowest levels since the 2020 survey. Rising costs of goods, services, and wages were the most common financial challenge. Reaching customers and growing sales was the most common operational one. A banker who only talks about rates is missing the actual problem. The business may not need a cheaper loan nearly as much as it needs a cleaner plan for delayed receivables, a backup supplier, and ninety extra days of breathing room. (fedsmallbusiness.org) That is where Kerner’s fifth conversation lands: resilience planning. Not a glossy continuity binder. A live discussion about what happens if a key vendor fails, if a tariff changes the landed cost of inventory, if a customer pays late, or if a growth opportunity arrives before cash does. The checklist sounds basic because it is basic. That is what makes it good advice. In this environment, the smartest banking relationship is the one that helps a business owner answer a plain question before the market asks it for them: what is your plan B if the money arrives late and the bill arrives now? (libn.com)