GonzoBankers, the moment of truth has arrived. You’ve nursed through your company holiday party hangover, apologized to those you offended, and submitted your rebuttals to H.R. Time to kick back and just let the entertainment of the 2013 GonzoBanker Awards wash over you. It’s time for us to toast the mighty, recognize the innovators, skewer those who have rambled off the path of righteousness, and poke a little fun at all of the above. This year’s edition has a strict two-drink minimum, so plan your reading accordingly.
THE BANKING AWARDS
The ‘Gene Pool Mix and Splice’ Award: Texas Dow Employees Credit Union (TDECU) for its purchase and successful integration of seven branches from Whitney Bank. An early example of what will become pretty commonplace both ways in the months to come. One thing you have to give Stephanie Sherrodd and her team in Lake Jackson – they’re not afraid of anything.
The ‘If It’s Tuesday, It Must be Belgium’ Conversion Tip of the Hat Award: Andrews Federal Credit Union, which converted core systems and branches across seven different time zones.
Bank Sale of the Year: First Victoria Sells to Prosperity. A great win for Russell Marshall and the shareholders of First Victoria. The multiple on this deal (250% of tangible book value) is one of the highest in recent memory. A special shout out to our friend and CFO Greg Sprawka of First Victoria – a true soldier in the fight for bank financial performance.
The Pac Man Award goes to recognize the host of new acquisitive “roll up” players that are creating new mid-size banks faster than you can say accretion. They include:
These players are certainly bringing game to the industry.
The Shape Changer Award – Part 2 goes to Thrivent Financial, which transformed its $500 million bank into a credit union at the end of 2012 and opened Thrivent Credit Union in 2013.
The Triple Diamond Change Management Award goes to Angela Veksler, CIO of Washington Federal Bank. This former WAMU technologist has had her hands busy in 2013 with the integration of South Valley Bank, the acquisition of 51 Bank of America branches, and the wholesale review of the bank’s technology environment.
The Endangered Species Award: the Head of Retail. This brick and mortar-focused creature has seen its natural habitat decimated by a plague of locust-like digital channel offerings. While some in this species have made the evolutionary leap to Head of Channels, it is feared that many will not survive.
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https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Power-Information-Capitalism-Revolutionizing/dp/1621570274
THE STINKING FEDS AWARDS
The Second Annual Matt Taibbi Too Big to Jail Award: Hell,
The Two Words Bankers Feared Most in 2013: Disparate Impact. Two potential Supreme Court cases were settled this year related to bankers’ fear of an unfair Fair Housing crackdown. Here’s hoping for congressional or regulatory clarity on this issue in the future for the 99.9% of bankers who are not bad guys.
Most Miserable Acronym of the Year: QM. The CFPB is weeding out some bad practices but taking product innovation along with it and creating yet more process and reporting complexity. Will non QM loans be a new portfolio lender niche? We shall see.
THE TECHNOLOGY AWARDS
Bank Core Deal of the Year Award: Jack Henry Silverlake scores a major win at $6B First Commonwealth Bank, unseating FIS Systematics. Nice win for the boys in Monett!
Credit Union Core Deal of the Year Award: Fiserv’s DNA group did an impressive job of preserving the $6B Randolph-Brooks FCU relationship.
Web/Mobile Deal of the Year Award: Q2 signs Umpqua. The second place deal wasn’t even close.
Acquisition of the Year Award: Fiserv buys Open Solutions. This plugs a hole in Fiserv’s arsenal, especially on the credit union side, and has the potential to fill many gaps in OSI as a going concern and in DNA, specifically, as a product that will be stabilized and poised for better releases and service.
Vendor to Watch if You’re a Vendor: Rising out of Brooklyn’s beleaguered FinPilot think tank, payments disrupter PayTheMan is catching the attention of the banking world. With its real time mobile telepathy and payments subrogation tools, PayTheMan is making some sweet payments music. Are you listening?
The Second Annual Please Don’t Screw it Up Award: ACI wins this award for the second year in a row, this time for its acquisition of ORCC.
The Make Sure it Has a 1-Year ROI Award: FIs spending money to retrofit ATMs to accept un-enveloped check deposits.
The Omnichannel Invoice Award: This goes to the vendors touting omnichannel delivery but still charging separate “per user” fees for Internet banking, tablet banking, mobile banking, electronic bill payment, etc.
The Don’t Go Near it if the Lights are Still Blinking Technology Award: VRU.
The New VRU Award: Internet Banking.
Longevity in Business Lending Automation Award: Microsoft Excel. Sadly, spreadsheets STILL continue to be the tool of choice in most (broken) commercial lending processes. Hey, it’s not Microsoft’s fault; Excel was never designed to be an LOS or workflow engine.
THE VENDOR AWARDS
The Secondary Becomes Primary Award goes to LOS strongman D&H for its purchase of Harland. We love the idea of an ancillary vendor buying a core provider, and we think it’s a sign of things to come as core functionality continues to be ho-hummed off of everyone’s radar screens. Here’s to D&H doing with core/ancillary integration what Harland was never able to get done.
Buzzword BINGO! Award: There is no way to beat NCR’s announcement of its plans to purchase Digital Insight. In a one-pager announcement, the press release included such beauties as “omni-channel,” “unparalleled value proposition,” “transformation,” “compelling consumer experience,” “profoundly reinvent,” “compelling value proposition,” “enterprise software stack,” “differentiated consumer experience,” “banking touchpoint,” “intelligent fraud prevention and prevention framework,” and “independently accretive to 2014 non-GAAP EPS.” And who doesn’t love a healthy boost to non-GAAP EPS? If your card had these buzzwords, you’re a winner! https://www.ncr.com/newsroom/resources/ncr-announces-transformative-financial-services-acquisitions
Oh, I get it! They are all pieces of a bigger puzzle.
The Rip Van Winkle Award: This goes to the sales manager at a major core vendor who was witnessed (TWICE – at separate FIs!) by Cornerstone consultants to be sleeping – hard – during his/her company’s product demonstration. We’re talking full-blown, drooling, REM sleep here, folks. The upsides: He/she wasn’t using a mobile phone during the demo and there was no detectable snoring.
The least clicked button ever.
The Trending on eBay Award: This goes to the orange and apparently valuable Fiserv Acumen pens, mouse pads, squeezee foam balls and other various Acumen tchotchkes now fetching a pretty premium on eBay. We didn’t know he meant it this way, but it lends credence to that Acumen sales rep who told our clients: “With Fiserv spending so much money on Acumen, the future success of Acumen isn’t a guess; it’s a fact. It’s not even arguable.” Caption: The least clicked button ever.
The Trend That Never Was Award (sponsored by Clear Pepsi): This goes to the heavily reported but utterly nonexistent trend of massive commercial bank demand for real time core systems.
The Change Your Sinning Ways Award goes to the big core vendors, and several others, for their not-so-subtle passive/aggressive attitude toward integrating third party solutions. We have always felt that good integration was 20% technology, 30% skills, and 50% both sides just being willing to do it. This year, we heard more stories about the big guys using price, schedule delays, and flat-out “no way” responses to hinder or stop third party integration because they don’t like the competition. In a time when technology can finally empower integration and customers need this the most, it is not only frustrating to banks to see this happen, it’s disgraceful. Nobody ever won in this industry by making it harder for the other guy. Enough already.
The PT Barnum Award: FIS trying to put a positive spin around its involvement in MCX, which is pretty much explicitly trying to bypass banks in the mobile payments process. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130711005313/en/MCX-Taps-FIS-Power-Mobile-Commerce-Payments
The Killing the Category Killers Award: We give this award to the FIS IBS CeB and BeB products for consumer and commercial Internet banking, respectively. While these products are not particularly handsome, FIS has steadily assembled a suite of Internet banking products that competes well with the category killers’ functionality and can boast about superior core integration.
True Innovators Award: This goes to a few companies witnessed at Finovate by Cornerstone. They’re start-ups, for the most part, so relax on the lack of proven install bases and financial strength!
Great Moments in System Demonstrations
Put a group of vendors/presenters together with FI prospects for several days and there are bound to be some great nuggets to quote. A sampling from 2013:
The Best Riff of 2013: This goes to “Gonzo Riff,” a helluva riff that was custom-written and performed for GonzoBanker by Brent Croal, son of GonzoBanker’s own Michael “Croal Dude” Croal. https://www.crnrstone.com/company/team/michael-croal.php Consider this our new At-Bat music. We encourage all clients to play this song as we enter any meeting: https://bit.ly/J7ZpHT
The Best Song of 2013 as Selected by Various Cornerstone Staffers:
Thanks to all of our clients and colleagues for a superb 2013! GonzoBankers, we hope your 2014 is transformative, disruptive, compelling, channel agnostic and executable well within your software stack’s bandwidth. BINGO!
-GB