Transcript
Well, hello out there in fintech land.
This is Sam Kilmer, managing director of Cornerstone Advisors and your host of Fintech Hustle.
I’m joined by a rock-star crew. Here we are in the hall, kind of, sort of. I’ll tell you a little bit about that in a minute.
We’re in the hall here at the AFT Spring Summit 2024 in Las Vegas. Kind of, but not.
It’s a little Vegasy here. We’ll tell you about that in a minute.
We’re here at the Encore in almost Boston, across the river. It’s a Wynn, so it’s got this whole Vegas thing going on, except when you open your windows it’s kind of more like an oil refinery type deal going on.
But it’s very cool. Great conference.
We’re in the hall here. This is the Renoir room. We were upgraded from, was it the Picasso room or the Degas room?
Anyway, we’re dealing in French artistry over here in addition to fintech.
We’re glad to be here with you, and I have a rock-star crew I’m going to tell you a little bit about.
For starters over here, my colleague, director Stacy Bryant, rock star herself, former fintecher and former banker and credit unioner.
So she brings lots of experiences and has joined me here at this great event.
Stacy and I have a rock-star cast here that we’re going to tell you a little bit about.
We’ve got AFT royalty here and former president, kind of a rock star also, chief growth officer of FIntegrate, but he was the former president of AFT, Jeff Harper.
Also, what is it, Fee Income Guy on Twitter?
Fee Income Guy.
Fee Income Guy. I remembered.
Okay, I like that. On brand.
So that’s Jeff Harper.
We also have Tiffany Matthews, who is the executive vice president of sales and partnerships at Tyfone.
Some of you may have been hearing a little bit about Tyfone and some of their private equity investments going in and exciting things going on.
Digital banking provider, integration provider.
Then we’re also joined by industry legend Mark Forbis.
See if I get this right. I’m going to get it wrong. I’m going to try to do your LinkedIn profile in less than 30 seconds.
You were chief technology officer at Jack Henry, now on IncredibleBank’s board, Citizens Bank’s board. You’re on like four fintech boards, or maybe five, who’s counting really.
And you’re also, if I’m not mistaken, an executive adviser or guru to the folks at THL Partners private equity.
So the trifecta over here. He’s in all camps. Got to watch out for this guy.
Did I get that right, Mark?
All right. Cool.
So that’s my crew today.
What I’d like to do is just start off asking all these folks a little bit about their day in the life.
Tiffany, why don’t we start with you?
I’m a big believer in ladies first.
Tell us about a day in the life of Tiffany Matthews. What’s it look like?
Oh boy, that’s a loaded question.
I specialize in those.
A day in the life of Tiffany Matthews could be in any possible airline, airport, 30,000 feet, 15,000 feet, boardrooms, calls, building out proposals on-site with credit unions, working with the product teams, talking to new vendors, working with our current vendors.
It’s a mixed bag, man.
Some days firefighting. Sometimes I put that outfit on.
So hashtag mixed bag, man.
I like that because that sounds like it.
Jeff, what about you? Day in the life.
Well, Sam, thank you so much.
My day in the life has been no typical day in the life.
I made a career change here recently and joined FIntegrate Technologies out of Birmingham, Alabama.
So right now, my day in the life is to learn our new products at our new company.
But when things get rolling, it’s building teams, it’s building partnerships, it’s leaving on airplanes, trying to get free hotel rooms with Marriott and so forth.
But I just love community banks and credit unions.
Now we’re bringing new technology to the marketplace in terms of collections and dispute management and so forth.
Outside of that, the day in the life is taking care of five grandchildren when I’m not on the road.
And that’s a true blessing.
Well, and not just taking care of community banks.
I’m seeing a lapel pin here that looks very familiar.
He’s representing.
He’s representing.
Hashtag represent.
So thank you for that.
Appreciate the backstory too about the grandkids. That’s awesome stuff.
Mark, tell us about your day in the life.
Oh my goodness.
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on this.
Big fan.
Not just sucking up.
The cool thing about my day in the life is I’m just so gratified to be able to spend time on bank boards, working with technology companies.
Maybe it’s bad to give yourself your own title of OG, but I really do feel like I’m an original gangster of technology.
I just love this event because it’s all my peeps and partnerships.
Then I have this new gig with THL.
It’s kind of fun helping with some deal flow and seeing what’s going on, learning a little bit more about the private equity side.
Obviously, I was involved in a lot of deals at Jack Henry.
But yeah, just having fun.
Yes, spend time with the grandkids, and maybe a little too much time at home, my wife tells me.
So I try to get on the road a couple of days a month, maybe four or five, but not traveling as much as I used to.
That’s very cool.
I think hashtag deal flow for the OG.
We’ll take that away from this.
Mark’s going to walk out of these halls with a couple of deals for any of you out there seeking monetary flow.
Here’s the guy.
Stacy, you’re several months into this gig at Cornerstone Advisors, and I’ve had the blessing to get to hang out with you and your energy level and your knowledge for the industry from all sides.
Tell us about your day in the life right now. I want to hear about it.
Yeah, for sure.
Super stoked to be here.
My day in the life is pretty much leveraging a whole bunch of relationships.
I mean, I’ve been working with credit unions and fintech and banks for over 20 years, and AFT has been such a treat.
I’ve literally let my curly hair down and had conversations with OGs here.
It is by far the first conference, so to speak, where folks are really exchanging some good information.
We’re really trying to put each other on and figure out how we can be of service.
I like that.
It makes me excited.
It makes me excited to be part of your team.
It makes me excited to ask questions.
OG, right before we started recording here, was sharing some of his apps and how he checks on his wife via the Ring app, but he does it out of love.
So it’s great to learn from the OG here at AFT.
Outside of what we do, I can get some corners here.
It’s a lot of acronyms.
I love it.
Mad respect on the OG Ring check on that.
I think in my family it’s Life360.
With my kids, the way that works out, and actually me probably if I really push it, is if I turn Life360 off, my wife gets to take the phone.
So that’s pretty much the way it works.
Definitely with our kids though.
Seriously guys, it’s a treat to hang with you.
Funland at Fenway last night, just saw lots of shop talk.
I was hanging out, knocking back some drinks with Danny Payne from Jack Henry talking shop.
Lots of folks hanging out on the balcony with Melissa Kopp from Neural Payments talking shop.
I love it when we get a chance to hang like this.
I would love to just get your sense, guys, if there are one or two things that you’re hearing in the hallways, in your elbow-twisting conversations, that popped out at you as kind of of-the-moment things that are happening.
First of all, mad respect to Nathan Baumeister for bringing in the conductor, Mr. Zander, and then bringing in the banker, Bob Rivers, this morning.
Just good stuff happening in there.
As my friend Mike Triana from Velocity Solutions was telling me this morning, so much of the good stuff happens with the elbow twisting in the hallways and the byways here.
I’m just curious, are there one or two things that you guys are hearing in the hallways in your conversations that popped out at you as of-the-moment things that are happening?
Name names if you want to, but you don’t have to.
We’re not trying to make it awkward.
Just what are you hearing in the halls here?
Since I started with you before, Tiffany, why don’t we start with you, Mr. Harper?
Yeah, great question, Sam.
I think this is my 17th AFT.
So every time I come to these, royalty, but anyhow, when I come, having done this so many years, you run into so many different people.
You hear so many different stories.
A couple of takeaways for me, especially since I’ve made a recent change, are the enthusiasm from companies that are still looking for partners and to collaborate and what’s new in the industry.
Collaboration has been the theme of AFT for years, but this particular one for me now is the enthusiasm for what’s new.
We think there are things happening in the credit space out there where debt’s going to pick up and some charge-offs and so forth.
I think we’re at the right place at the right time with what I’m doing.
It’s great to hear when companies are looking for that type of technology to complement some of the things in the digital space and so forth.
The other thing we’re hearing is the pieces about the labor market, trying to hire new talent.
I think we’re going through a wave of that again.
Who’s available in the marketplace for all types of jobs?
I’m hearing some of that noise out there.
People are maybe ready to make some shifts.
Tiffany, what are you hearing in the hall out here, or even what are you saying in the hall?
What’s happening in these exchanges?
Yeah.
I agree with Jeff here on everybody trying to find out who’s in the market, who’s looking, and how can we find the best talent out there.
A lot about faster payments, a lot about FedNow and Zelle and the differences out there.
I think a lot of feedback from credit unions wanting to look for a payments hub and an easier way to do that.
Definitely meeting with tons of vendors in the space that are current partners, possible future partners that we’re considering.
Mr. Zander was awesome yesterday for the keynote.
So tons of people talking about the art of possibility and are you in your downward spiral and where are you at right now?
Really people just want to know, “Hey, what’s new and what’s going on and what’s changed since the last time I saw you,” whether it was AFT or five years ago.
Great opportunities here to see people you haven’t seen in maybe six, seven, eight years and catching up with them.
They’ve probably got a different logo on.
“What are you doing now, and how can we possibly work together?”
Just a lot of banter and collaboration.
A quick double-down shout-out on Mr. Zander.
For all of you out there that think this might have been Robin Zander, the lead singer for Cheap Trick, one of my favorite ’70s and ’80s bands, it was Benjamin Zander, who’s the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic.
If you get a chance to see this guy, don’t miss it.
Top five.
I’ve seen hundreds, given a few also, keynotes in my day.
This was top five, probably.
I can’t even remember what the other four are.
It was that good.
Made me remember my mom.
I’m going to get all verklempt here, but point is, it was really good and personal for everybody.
I want to give a mad shout-out to Maestro.
Bravo on that.
Sorry to interrupt the flow here, but I wanted to pick that one up.
Mark, what are you hearing in the hallways?
Yeah.
Again, that opening keynote was amazing.
You’ve got to find a video and watch it.
The TED Talk.
Yeah, that’s right.
It’s on TED Talk, I believe.
For me, I am still enamored and still frustrated by my lack of capability to have built good data flows even when I was at Jack.
If somebody asked me, “What’s your biggest regret?” that was the biggest regret, not being able to really get the data out of all of our systems and help banks and credit unions really access all that data.
That’s kind of where I’m leaning in conversations.
Hearing some of the things that some of the people here are working on.
Then, of course, a lot of the things around customer profitability and deposit growth and really leaning into those areas.
It’s cliche to talk about digital, but I know it’s really important, and I still love that space because I don’t think we’ve still got it completely right.
Of course, everybody’s always looking for the holy grail of LOS.
I’ve got three scars on my back from trying to build those, and so I know how hard that space is.
But there are a lot of people doing some really cool things.
It’s just fun to lean into that.
In my prior life before Cornerstone, I worked for a major LOS provider.
I remember we used to have clients say that they were looking for the universal LOS.
One of our product guys, Mark Little, mad respect out there, Mark, used to say there is no universal LOS.
It might have the same UX, but when you peel the onion back, you’re going to find that it’s different under there.
It’s so hard to do.
I appreciate you mentioning the scars.
But enough about that.
Stacy, tell us what you’re hearing in these conversations because I know you’ve been in lots of chats.
Take it.
I certainly want to echo and add on to what Jeff mentioned as well.
Thank you so much, Jeff.
The biggest thing of it all, Trey from Trabian had a session, I believe it was yesterday, a technology session, and it was pretty neat.
You had software developers, you had folks who were just focused on products, now filling in their own FAQ and creating our own sessions.
That was pretty stoked.
One of the greatest things was strategic partnerships.
But outside of what one fintech is doing and how another can help is using AI.
That’s a partnership, y’all.
How do we use AI and leverage that as a tool?
How do we use AI and perhaps empower talent?
A lot of folks, even talent on the entry level, encouraging them and using AI, GPT, to train them and taking it another step further.
Using AI even to get a market post of the competitors so that they can have good speaking points with objections and what have you.
So when we think about partnerships, let’s also think about AI.
We’re in 2024.
I know Ron Shevlin, our chief research officer, that’s one of the biggest mentions in the What’s Going On in Banking report.
I’ve got to jump in on this.
I know Ron’s going to fine me for saying AI.
But the real thing I’m kind of focused on is I feel like everybody’s looking for the home run with AI, and I feel like there are so many base hits that we can get just by leveraging, again, I’m back to the data piece because it’s all about the data, stupid, for me.
I do think that whatever we can do with large language models and natural language processing and leveraging in our call centers and our interactions and figuring out those little things that we can really learn from the data, data-driven insights, data-driven intelligence, I think AI, air quotes, helps us with that.
We’ve got to solve those.
But I think everybody’s trying to hit the home run.
I feel like we can just hit a lot of base hits.
I think that would be a good way to...
Yeah, I think, Mark, for me, I love the base-hit analogy since you and I are baseball people here in Fenway last night.
But for me, running our growth side of the business, and from a sales perspective, I see AI helping my internal teams.
Recording our demos, recording our outbound calls and our notes and taking that data and driving us to make us a better sales team, a better marketing team.
I see it from an efficiency standpoint.
How do we do more with less and use that data to do that?
I would also say with the data, everybody’s always wanting to have the data, but then being able to use that data not only for AI, but also for financial wellness.
I work with credit unions a lot, so they’re always wanting to find out, how do we promote financial wellness?
How do we help our members?
With AI, even recently, without doing the big home run, like how much money have I spent at Starbucks last week?
A lot too much.
Can we use that data to find out when are their paychecks coming in?
Can they save money on a car payment?
How can we help them, especially with the way the market is right now?
Interest rates are up.
They’re taking tons of loans out.
You kind of see probably that average deposit level going down.
Very cool.
I know Steve Williams from Cornerstone, I love his analogy.
He said bad AI, we’re starting to get to a point now when we say bad AI, is kind of like bad late-’80s keyboards.
I think it’s actually good.
I always look, because I don’t know if you guys get emails that have clearly been AI-generated, and I still see those as good examples.
I keep them because I can tell they’re just Cheeseville stuff.
I think we’re getting to the point where, if we can de-tune that, maybe there’ll be a point even where the AI bots are actually hatching podcasts like this.
But I’d like to think they’ll never do that because, Stacy, we’ve got to do this stuff.
I’m also kind of really curious from your travels in the halls here, but also your travels in the American Airlines and Delta terminals and things like that.
What do you see right now in the business that really inspires you?
What’s working well right now?
If you had to point to one thing that you think, “Hey, this is doing about as well as I think it could be doing in the business right now,” something you’re really bullish on right now that’s working well in the fintech biz, what would you point to?
Who wants to go first?
Not trying to put pressure on anybody.
Anybody seeing anything work really good right now?
How about you, Stacy? You got anything?
I’ll give it a stab here.
I had a conversation with Tim over at Praxent yesterday, and he mentioned a book, I think it was like Uncommon Good, and pardon Tim, I am so sorry.
So sorry I didn’t make you proud.
But nonetheless, a lot of businesses are really focusing on what are they really good at.
Back to that conversation with Trey at Trabian, he mentioned that there are a lot of times, what is the argument around marketplace?
How do vendors go ahead and try to appetize everything, but does it overall make sense with the scope?
Focus on your niche, so to speak.
Focus on your segment and be bomb at that, and let the other vendors eat, so to speak.
Let’s come together that way.
That’s what I’m seeing in the market for sure.
Yeah.
I think I could tag on to the niche approach.
Especially when I wear my board-member banker hat, our niche lending, niche deposit-growth-focused products.
Especially over this last year, we’ve had to lean into those things really hard, and we probably had to narrow our focus a bit.
Can’t be all things to all people.
I know some of these are buzzword cliches, I guess, but the reality is we’ve had to do that.
Certainly from the fintech side, I think that’s really being intentional about what we’re selling and what we are providing the solution for.
I know it’s always, “Show me the ROI.”
I get that.
But everybody’s focused on efficiency right now.
I know there’s also that overriding factor of thinking, “AI is going to eliminate jobs.”
I don’t see that, not for a while.
Maybe in the future, but not right now.
I think it’s going to help us be more efficient, help us get better actionable data and take action sooner with that.
That’s what I see being successful right now.
Yeah.
I definitely see FIs in general, community FIs, they’re very open to change.
They want the big-bank technology, but they also want to keep their brand and their people and that personalized touch in front of them.
How do we leverage that technology and that AI to then serve it up to have their people in front of them?
I’ve been in the industry for about 13 years now.
I think we kind of saw it go from it was kind of plain Jane, and then it got real flashy and you wanted all the real cool little trinkets and shiny toys.
Then they said, “No, that’s distracting.”
Then they stripped it down to be a little plain again.
Now we’ve got AI to serve up.
How do you keep it easy and simple and everything is just super easy for them to do, while keeping it safe and secure and that big-bank technology, but then making sure we have fabulous Stacy right in front of our members?
That’s what I kind of hear in the space right now.
Interesting.
You’re like Mr. Zander with your hands, and you just brought us in there.
That was beautiful.
That was so nice.
Oh yeah.
Happy birthday.
Let’s go.
But I think, just to pile on here, what I’m seeing when I’m out in boardrooms or on calls with bankers or credit union leaders and so forth is they want great technology, but they’re also changing their focus, coming back home to serve their communities.
Everybody was chasing, “I want deposits around the country. I’m going to open up a special loan production office somewhere.”
They realize these shiny objects are out there, but now let’s bring it back to our community and serve our community, serve the board that we have there.
That’s what I’m seeing.
Technology will play on top of that, but let’s get back to banks making money and let’s do it within our surroundings and for the markets we know.
That’s just my opinion.
You know, I think another thing that I’ve noticed, because a lot of times in the halls out here you hear people talk about “up to assets of $5 billion,” or there’s always this asset-size conversation.
It’s kind of intriguing, but we’ve just generally found it has more to do with whether people are serious and have developers on their team or have whatever resources they need that shows the commitment to it.
One of the things I think has been cool, both here and at the Bank Director AOBA conference back in January, that I’ve heard is a combination of building, or maybe not building, but customizing and flexibility-type solutions.
Tyfone would be a good example of that, where credit unions or banks that might not even be that big are maybe, it’s not the flashy, to your point, Tiffany, it’s not the flashy stuff.
It’s more about, no, there are one or two ways I want to be really different, and I don’t want to just buy off the rack.
That’s going upmarket a little bit.
At the same time, what I find interesting is you’ve got some fintechs, one here that told me something on the DL that unfortunately I can’t talk about yet, and then one that told me, like Numerated told me at AOBA that they had signed Citi Bank to a spreading thing.
I think it was through a partnership they have with Moody’s.
Point being, here’s a technology that was hatched down the street here in Boston by Eastern Bank, that then spun out with Dan O’Malley with Numerated.
It started with community banks, midsize banks, and here we have it going all the way to the top.
It reminds me of back when I used to work at Harland Financial and we had a turnkey solution that somehow or another we managed Bank of America was using it.
Sometimes the widget product can go all the way up, and sometimes the flexible product can come down.
It’s more about how it happens.
Who’s on first?
How many people do you have?
Are you serious about it?
That’s really pretty cool because, back to Zander, the art of possibility.
We’ve just sort of said, “Well, this is really only for people below $500 million,” or, “This is really only for people above.”
It’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
This is not about $5 billion.
This is about, do they have a team that can do this?
Well, let’s rock it.
Now let’s switch gears.
Let’s go negative for a minute.
Is there something in the industry that you think is not working particularly well right now that you wish, if you could just wave a wand, you could change out and make better?
Again, I’m not intending to put anybody on the spot, but is there something you wish was working better in the fintech biz that’s just not quite there yet?
You have permission to go negative.
Here we go.
Anybody?
Any takers?
Again, I think this is more of, I’m kind of back to my data piece.
I still think we’re not making it as easy as we should.
I know there are great companies out there doing a great job, and they’re getting there, but we’re still not there on complete openness and complete data access.
Look, that’s as much my fault as anybody’s.
Being at Jack Henry, we tried to be open and I think we have a great approach to that, but it’s still not easy.
That data is key to everything.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with Mac Thompson with White Clay.
Some of the things they’re doing on the customer profitability side and really understanding how the retail team is doing, how the commercial team is doing.
Banks don’t really lean into that as hard as I think they should.
I’ve got to give props to Mac for the phrase, “We’re fine.”
It’s like, “No, you’re not fine because you don’t know.”
I sit on a bank board, a couple bank boards.
I push those topics, but it’s still hard, and it’s been hard for a long time.
I think mine is pretty simple.
I would say speed.
Time.
Everybody wants everything to happen faster, including me.
I’d like to win the lottery a whole lot faster than that’s in the plans for.
But not only the speed to market, the speed to make it easier, the speed to be able to get the data easier, the speed to be able to integrate easier.
We all know that so much of this is a journey, it’s not a destination.
If I could just hit the fast-forward button, because I have no patience whatsoever in case you didn’t know that.
For mine, it’s just speed.
I’d also like the credit unions and banks to speed up their decisions.
If we could figure out how to do that, that’d be great.
Yeah.
You struck one here.
If there are any bankers listening to this, pick up your buying cycle.
Let us know who’s on the decision team and so forth, and let’s just make some decisions.
Even if we lose, I’d rather lose early than hang around.
Yes.
Absolutely.
I think the other thing is, we’ve got this great technology and obviously we can make it easier, use the data and make it actionable and so forth.
But one of the things I’ve noticed, and I’ve been in this for about four decades now.
Three.
Oh my goodness.
Many decades.
I always go back and say, for anybody who has a microwave oven at home and we’re selling this technology, think about a microwave and you’ve got all these buttons on there, like popcorn, fix a potato and so forth.
Banks buy all this cool technology from Tiffany or from myself, but all they do is reheat the water.
So I wish the adoption...
My pain is, how do you get the banks to use it?
I think there are gaps in training.
I know there are some great companies out there like LemonadeLXP and others that are teaching folks to push the technology out.
I think the adoption needs to be better, adoption of this cool technology instead of just pushing the reheat button on your coffee.
Use all the buttons on the microwave that you pay for.
That’s my pitch.
Yeah.
I do want to echo, Mark, what you mentioned about data.
The most negative conversations that I’ve had here at AFT when it comes to data were so many financial institutions are stuck not being able to have their own data.
Now leveraging so many tools and AI and trying to improve efficiencies, getting a better look at that contract part and tapping into making sure that regardless of how long the term is, me as a financial institution, I want my data and I want it now.
One other thing I would add, you asked about what we’re hearing in the space.
Not only do they want their data, but they want to look at other people’s data too.
They want a wider view of it.
I think about when I was talking about wishing we’d move faster.
I do think that with the pandemic, that really did accelerate a lot of people to move faster and a lot of the smaller FIs.
Where you were talking about, “Hey, this is only for this size credit union or this size credit union.”
Well, if everybody’s got to work from home, everybody needs that same technology to be able to do that.
I feel like it did kind of blur the lines there a little bit.
Anyway, fleeting thought.
No, and I appreciate you guys stepping up on this because it’s not every day you get somebody who puts a mic in front of you and says, “Hey, go negative.”
But what I’ve found, as long as I’ve been in the business, like you, Jeff, many decades, is I keep coming back to everybody says they want best practices, but what they really mean is they want to hear about what went wrong so they can try to avoid it and do something else.
I always try to go there just a little bit.
We’ve been very spirited in our exchange and we move pretty briskly.
I think we’ve got a little bit of time here.
I would just ask, is there anything else you guys want to talk about?
Is there anything that’s on your mind here?
Again, this is an open exchange.
We can cut this as a three-minute demo instead of a 13-minute extended guitar solo.
That’s for you, Ron Shevlin.
Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.
Okay.
You guys have got bucket hats.
For all of you who think bucket hats aren’t for you, right here, you’ve got some OGs rocking bucket hats too.
I do have one other thing, unless you guys have anything else you want to talk about.
I have one really important burning topic.
In addition to your bucket hats, each of you gets a commemorative Fintech Hustle double-album coaster set.
For you too.
The thing about this is I have to point this out because I have had a couple people say, “Hey, listen, I don’t have a record player anymore.”
Do not put a vinyl needle down on these things.
These are just plastic coasters.
You put your drink on there.
It’s possible, especially after hanging out in Vegas, I mean Boston, for several days.
Guys, this was such a treat to have you.
Trade notes.
I know we’re going to go back in here and we’re going to learn some more.
But great to spend time with you.
Thanks to my co-host with the most over here, Miss Stacy Bryant.
Back at you.
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Fintech Hustle.
We’ll see you out there in the hall and on the road.
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