Clarifying Questions

• When the CEO says reduce reliance on interest income, is there a specific target mix in mind, for instance a fee income target as a percentage of total revenue?
• Are there any geographic or regulatory constraints on where Cornerstone can expand?
• Has the bank made any prior attempts to grow fee-based revenues, and if so what happened?

Framework

Bucket 1: Existing Business‍

Objective: Understand how much growth is achievable within Cornerstone's current products and customer base before evaluating new directions, since improving penetration of existing customers is typically faster and cheaper than acquiring new ones.

• Wallet Share: share of existing retail and business customers' financial needs currently served by Cornerstone vs. competitors
• Product Penetration: which products, such as wealth management, insurance, or business banking, are underleveraged with the existing customer base
• Pricing Power: whether Cornerstone has room to improve fee structures on existing products without driving customer attrition

Bucket 2: New Growth Vectors

‍Objective: Understand which adjacent markets or new products could generate meaningful fee-based revenue at an acceptable risk and investment level.

• Adjacent Products: wealth management, small business lending, insurance, or payments as fee-generating expansions
• New Segments: whether Cornerstone should target underpenetrated customer segments such as small businesses, high net worth individuals, or younger demographics
• Partnerships and Acquisitions: whether organic growth is sufficient or whether acquiring a fee-based business such as a wealth manager or insurance broker would accelerate the strategy