Fintech Hustle Flashback: Key Insights from 2024

Well, hello out there, everybody. This is Sam Kilmer, your host of the Fintech Hustle podcast, and we have an excellent flashback episode for you today.

I get to be joined by my colleagues and rock-star band here that I’m going to introduce to you in a second.

We’re going to take you through some of our highlights of 2024 and some of the things that we see going on in the business.

Who do I get to be with today?

Some fantastic people, like for example Stacy Bryant, our director.

I think she also does a little thing out on LinkedIn you may have seen called hashtag, what is it, Travels with Stacy?

Is that right, Stacy?

Something like that?

On the Road with Stacy.

On the Road with Stacy.

Let that be a lesson to you that I’m not on brand.

I totally got that wrong, so thank you for correcting me on that.

Also joined by Mary Wisniewski, our chief content extraordinaire and editor at large.

Thank you for joining us, Mary.

Thanks, Sam.

Happy to be here.

Yeah.

And we have our chief research officer and chief snarkinator, Ron Shevlin.

Welcome, Ron.

Thanks, Sam.

And our partner and chief pocket-square enthusiast extraordinaire, Mr. Al Dominick.

Oh, and a mug too.

And last but certainly not least, since she’s the one that keeps the proverbial train on the rails, our producer, Bailey Wishard.

Welcome, Bailey.

Hey, happy to be here.

So let’s talk about this Fintech Hustle Flashback.

What is this?

What is this all about?

It’s not your garden-variety greatest hits album.

No, no, no, no, no.

We wouldn’t do anything that boring.

Although I see...

Oh, nice.

Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits.

Gotta show up with something, Sam.

If you’re going to have all that vinyl behind you, I had to.

I’ve got some props I’m going to pull out just to surprise you.

This is the first one.

Greatest Hits, Fleetwood Mac.

Man, I was only expecting pocket squares.

You’re already outperforming on my...

Oh wow.

We’ve got...

Well, I have this, Worst Case Scenario, which maybe that will happen here.

That’s awesome.

Well, I have to say, just take a moment, Bailey.

Tell us a little bit about the background on this.

This is all your idea.

I mean, if it goes off the rails and it just completely car crashes, this is completely your fault.

But it’s not going to.

Tell us about how you came up with this.

Yeah.

So this is our second Fintech Hustle Flashback episode.

Our first one we did around this time last year.

We were really inspired by Billie Eilish’s Vanity Fair series of interviews, which actually I don’t believe she’s done since last year.

So I’m sorry to us, I suppose.

Who’s Billie Eilish?

Who are we talking about?

Billie Eilish.

Never mind.

Yeah, I’ve never had to describe her before.

But yeah, if you all don’t listen to Billie Eilish, go look her up.

She’s got some cool stuff.

She did a series of Vanity Fair interviews for about seven years in a row where she would go back and look at her answers from the past years and then react to basically herself.

So we were thinking, what’s a fun way to look back at all the fun we’ve had at Fintech Hustle?

We were really inspired by that.

How can we pull up some moments from the past year and kind of see how we’ve grown, how the landscape has grown, how fintech has grown, or not grown in some cases?

But just the opportunity to really look back and see what themes are still prevalent that were coming throughout the year going into the next year.

So that was our inspiration.

We did it last year and it was a ton of fun, so we were like, why not do it again?

Well, since it was such a great idea, why don’t we just jump into the first flashback?

I was thinking on this, and thinking, boy, my good friend Erin Simpson over at Encore Bank said, “You know what? Deposits have to have been the biggest topic of the last year.”

I think it was a huge topic on Fintech Hustle.

Mary, I know when we were kind of looking back through some of the things, you had at least one clip that you wanted to take a look at.

You want to maybe tee that one up a little bit?

Yeah.

It just speaks to the point that it’s not just the rate that’s driving people to move their money.

I think it’s showing how the big banks are fighting for deposits and how it’s way more challenging nowadays than ever before.

Bailey, you want to go ahead and tee up the clip from Brian Bauer?

Absolutely.

When it comes to these comments around Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan and the other large FIs and fintechs that are out there, they’ve invested heavily.

They’ve invested 100,000 times more than most of these community and regional banks can invest into a data strategy.

That’s leading to the rise in acquisition costs.

It’s not just the fact that the interest rates have adjusted that’s led to that deposit competition.

It’s the amount of customer intelligence, customer information, that these large FIs and fintechs are leveraging that are really causing these community and regionals to have to compete harder for those customers and those deposits.

Thanks for sharing that.

Anybody else have any comments on Brian’s point?

By the way, Brian is the CEO of Rivio, for those who aren’t as familiar with Brian.

But now you are.

Any comments?

Al?

Ron?

Stacy?

Everyone’s jumping.

I love their faces.

It’s like...

We’re all at once.

This is a true flashback.

Sam stumps us right out of the gate.

Anybody have any flashback moments or epiphanies?

I want to add one thing, Sam.

Interviewing a bunch of entrepreneurs this year, one thing I was told on repeat was, when it’s limited resources, it’s actually freeing.

So I think that’s an opportunity for smaller banks and credit unions.

Sometimes the confines actually help you follow a creative project through, which could help lead to more deposits.

Well, and I think just overall, Brian was also speaking to just how competitive people are in the use of data and marketing and those things, especially the larger banks who are really staffed up and whatnot.

Stacy, when you and I were at the AFT Spring event at that, was it Wynn or Encore Hotel in Boston?

It’s kind of like Vegas meets Boston environment, right, Ron?

That’s outside of the city, but we don’t have to split hairs yet again about truth in advertising for AFT.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

That was not meant as a shameless plug, but probably even better that it worked out that way.

Anyway, Stacy, I remember something that caught your attention was some comments that Tiffany Matthews had mentioned.

You want to tee that up?

Yeah, no, for sure.

I think what caught my attention with Tiffany Matthews, really, is how do financial institutions, more so on the community financial institution side, when you’re seeing all this data, data is the new oil, how do we go ahead as a financial institution and not only use this data, deploy data, and how do you uncover opportunities for retention, for stickiness?

She went ahead and even mentioned something along the lines of using data for financial wellness.

So oftentimes there are so many sources of data.

I think the number one way that a community financial institution can go ahead and leverage that data, even on a CRM scale, is how do you leverage a customer or member?

When is their payday?

How are they using their money?

Where are the payments going?

How do we potentially save money on their car?

That was my biggest takeaway from her mention.

Hey, go ahead and tee that one up, Bailey.

Absolutely.

Using that data to do that.

The AI, 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.

But can we use that data to find out when their paychecks are coming in?

Can they save money on a car payment?

How can we help, especially with the way the market is right now?

Interest rates are up.

They’re taking tons of loans out.

I’ll add this too.

I’ve been speaking all across the road this entire year, and regardless of the community bank size or the credit union size, there are probably at least, at the very minimum, a third that don’t know how to start and how to start leveraging AI or automation.

This is the best way.

When you think about market extension, think about their demographic footprint.

When you think about a community financial institution, what does their business development marketing plan look like?

That’s the best way to be very prescriptive and understand how you can go ahead and assist and grow.

How do you cross-solve, not cross-sell?

I think I heard that in one of our other podcasts.

Well, I could also just give a quick shout-out to Tiffany because you may have noticed that Tiffany and Jeff and Mark were also wearing this nice bucket hat.

So mad respect to Tiffany.

She’s not embarrassed by the bucket hat.

Take that, Ron Shevlin.

On that note, let’s put a bow on this data theme and go ahead, Bailey, tee up the Mark Forbis clip.

Mark Forbis from THL Partners, formerly CTO of Jack Henry, was with us as well during that episode, and he had an interesting comment about data.

We’re not making it as easy as we should.

I know there are great companies out there that are 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.

Mad respect to Mark for not only the authenticity and transparency, but how about him looking back on his own accomplishments and maybe even wishing he could have done it a little bit better or whatever?

I thought it was really interesting on the data side of it.

I know, back to the deposits theme, Ron, we’ve spent a lot of time at different events and throughout the year working with Allison Cerra over at Alkami, who’s had a lot to say about data.

I know there was something that popped out at you about Allison.

You want to maybe tee that one up?

Yeah.

She talked a lot about the competitiveness with the big banks and the advantage that regional and midsized institutions can have relative to the big banks.

Bailey, maybe it would be better to just kind of tee up Allison’s comments, then I’ll pick it up from there.

Absolutely.

The Wall Street Journal reported probably about a year ago that over the past 10 years, U.S. consumers have forfeited $600 billion in deposit interest alone by keeping their deposits in the top five banks.

So clearly this isn’t just, if this were a case of, look, it’s because I can get better rates at a regional or community FI, that game has been won because regional and community FIs have been shown to provide the better rates.

I think the challenge really is, how do you acquire that account holder and how do you drive a differentiated user experience on top of that?

So I think this is beyond if Chase does that.

Obviously they’re big enough in the industry it’s going to have some kind of cascading effect.

But I think that’s not going to be sufficient for regional and community FIs to think that that’s enough because they’ve already essentially been providing better service, better rates, and yet Chase and the megabanks still have the lion’s share of the deposit holders.

Yeah.

There’s a lot to kind of tee up there.

Not to necessarily argue with Allison on this point, but I think she’s probably right that the midsize institutions do provide better service.

But that’s not something you experience as a new customer when you’re in the evaluation phase.

The common thread from Brian’s comments, Tiffany’s comments, Mark’s comments, and now Allison’s goes back to the utilization of data.

I tend to think of this as a pyramid with three layers.

At the bottom is data ingestion, accessing the data.

The middle piece is cleaning and sorting it.

Then the top of the pyramid, and where the value comes, is in the utilization and application of it.

I think this is why Chase is so good at what they do, because they’re making offers to people for $600 bonuses.

You don’t see midsized institutions do that.

The reason is because that’s a total loss to them.

But Chase is going to make that up because they’re making those offers to people who are going to bring not just the payments activities, but in many cases bring investing funds.

It’s just a different way of competing.

So the midsize institutions and the ones that we typically deal with and talk to need to find different strategies and approaches for acquisition that isn’t based on, “Hey, we have better service.”

They’ve got to find a different angle and path to it because the data is all saying that the big banks are winning.

If you start looking out into 2025 and the end of 2024, I think there’s a big gap now between how the large banks have basically solved the deposit-gathering problem, but not the midsized and smaller institutions.

Yeah.

Mary, when we were looking back on some points, you had pointed to some comments that Jeff Harper had made as the community and maybe regional financial institutions and credit unions start thinking about how they’re going to compete and not getting distracted.

You want to tee that up a little bit?

Hey, before you go there, Sam and Mary, Al, were you trying to jump in with a point?

I just want to jump in because a lot of what we’re talking about ties back into the potential of predictive analytics.

When you’re on the road as regularly as we are, I think it’s hard not to pick up on certain themes that still have a lot of appeal at the C-level and even at the board.

Predictive analytics, I think in 2025 a lot of investors are looking to see a return on what they’ve invested in.

I think there’s a greater appreciation that you have to be far more forward-thinking in your efforts for all the reasons that my colleagues have already surfaced.

That’s a good point.

I mean, if anybody’s heard about it in boardrooms, it’s how many boardrooms have you been in this year, Al?

This gentleman never discloses.

And here’s my other question.

This is the more important one.

Every time you go into a new boardroom, do you have a new or a different pocket square?

Or do you have a consistent...

If we’re going to start the hazing, I had a question for you because you pulled one hat on earlier and then had another one.

Are you as much of a hat hoarder as you appear to be?

Because if so, the challenge has been accepted this year.

Here we go.

Because you know this is happening.

There’s a hat.

Here’s more hats.

This is the Sam Kilmer tribute to hats.

No.

I hope you’re getting this, Bailey, because I’ve got more of them coming out.

Oh my goodness.

This is just what my family...

Hold on.

I’ve got this.

This is the Sam Kilmer Memorial Hat Service that we’re about to put into place.

Okay, since you did that...

Oh, excellent.

I recognize that.

I’m going Sam and Ron Shevlin.

This is it.

I like it.

World champion Boston Celtics being represented for our New York friends who are listening.

Very good.

Well, Ron, I happen to know where that hat came from.

I recall that was from the Q2 hat-making upstairs at the Q2 suite at The Financial Brand Forum.

Ron walked out of that place with that cowboy hat on, and he was making no freaking apologies about it either.

I’ve got to tell you, mad respect, Ron, because I never saw it coming.

I actually had to wear it on the plane home from Las Vegas because you can’t put this up in the overhead bins.

It’s giving Blazing Saddles.

That is awesome.

Totally.

That’s a good call-out, Stacy.

Come on.

And by the way, since we’re giving out shout-outs for hats and swag, in addition to Q2, which I’ve got one up on the wall there too...

That one always outdoes me.

Oh man, look at that.

Nicely played, Al.

That’s a good hat.

I love it.

This one here is one that Wayne Miller from ICBA and BankTech Ventures was handing out at an AFT event.

Thanks, shout-out Wayne, for giving me yet another hat.

Al, to your question about whether I refer to myself as a hat hoarder, my wife has referred to me as a hat something, and it sounds a little bit like hoarder, but the word’s a little different.

I’m not going to go there.

So Mary, you want to go ahead and tee up our next bit here before we go completely off the rails?

We have gone off the rails, but it’s a nice segue because we’re talking about don’t follow the shiny object, which may be all your hats in this case.

But...

Yeah, I think when Sam takes his hat off, that’s when we see the shiny object.

Everyone leaves this episode crying.

We should have said that at the beginning.

Yeah.

So this clip is all about staying focused so you’re achieving business results.

Hit it, Bailey.

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, technology, they want great technology and so forth.

But they’re also, I think, 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 the markets we know.

So that’s just my opinion.

Sam, the only thing I’ll add to this, it’s so funny because I think back in time in my earlier days of reporting.

I remember walking through different banks’ alleged innovation labs.

You could kind of see it on display.

There’s like this little kid energy sometimes when a new technology comes out.

It just gets funny.

But what’s hard to do, I think, from a digital banking executive perspective is just to decide to quit the thing when it’s not making sense or not making sense yet.

Any other comments on that from our esteemed committee of experts?

Yeah, I’ll jump in because I think...

Sorry, Stacy, go ahead.

No, just really quick.

Just to kind of reiterate what Mary was saying, when it comes to shiny objects, for those financial institutions that I was mentioning before, and they don’t know where to start.

A lot of fintechers, startups, are saying, “Yeah, we leverage AI and/or automation.”

What does that really mean?

I think that understanding what that looks like a year from now, two years from now...

One of the main questions I always like to ask is, what is the objective that you’re trying to accomplish?

Is it surrounding organic growth?

Is it surrounding retention?

Is it surrounding C&I, the commercial space?

Where are you going?

What is the objective?

I think that if folks can answer that question, it would allow them to go ahead and kind of reevaluate, okay, this may fit, this may not fit, this may fit perhaps maybe a year or two from now.

That’s almost exactly what I was going to say, Stacy.

I would have chosen a little bit different words.

I was going to say it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg problem where one’s the strategy and the other is the deployment and the investment.

Without a sense of where you’re going and, as you said, what’s the objective, then these things tend to die on the vine.

Right.

The ending before the beginning, almost.

Yeah.

And back to the comment earlier, a quote from Erin Simpson who said deposits have been the biggest topic of the last year.

One of the other things that Erin said was, “You know what the topic of the next year is? Fraud.”

You guys may have seen here while we were teeing up the last video, I was over at the turntable teeing up some different tunes.

Basically, I’ve got Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” for any of you who may have that in your workout playlists.

I think if there’s any eye of the tiger that the community banks have been looking into in ’24, on the middle to end of the year, it’s just been nuts in the area of fraud and scams.

Al, I know this is an area that you’ve been hearing about in boardrooms, and we’ve had some folks on the podcast who have talked about it.

You want to tee up our next segment?

Yeah.

I’m so happy that you only referenced music because this is right in line for a movie reference of Risky Business, and we certainly don’t need to see any visuals that would be associated with that fine flick.

But I think you’re right, Sam.

Everyone really is super focused on the rising pace of fraud and all the bad actors and how sophisticated they are and the way they’re attacking and manipulating different loopholes that people are trying to close as fast as they can.

It really comes down to the speed and the purpose that an organization has relative to the risks that it’s willing to take.

As we become more and more digital and things that were analog become digitized, it just opens up even greater opportunity for these bad actors to get involved.

That’s why I like what Alloy is doing right now.

I know we’ve got a clip from Parilee Wang.

Having spent time with Kelly, Laura, Keith, Tommy, Kieran and the really great group at Alloy, you start to see how some of these tech companies are trying to really do something meaningful.

I think what she has to say is worth a listen.

I see something new every day.

As much of a challenge as that is, it’s also really a bright spot I anchor on because I do have a lot of confidence that as long as there’s innovation coming to market and people are able to try it out and test it, we’re going to land on the ones that are truly best-in-class, truly delivering complementary signal, complementary detection.

That’s how we’re going to balance that.

Keep the growth.

Keep the best customer experiences.

Don’t create the best experiences for the folks who are trying to steal money, commit scams or otherwise commit financial crimes.

So just the pace of innovation, in my world, fraud-detection tools that are coming to market, is something that I really see as a bright spot for the future.

Yeah.

And Sam, as you listen to her take, I think this is a perfect reminder of why banks and credit unions need to think about their relationships and their partnerships.

It’s not a vendor.

You have to engage with these companies that are moving faster than the actual institutions are able to and leverage your collective talents and skills.

Really interesting.

I think it was actually in the same episode we had Charles Potts talking a little bit about the fraud aspects, and specifically the plight of community banks on that.

Bailey, why don’t you go ahead and pull up that Charles Potts clip, and then maybe we can circle back around that.

Mary, I think you had some thoughts you probably wanted to add to that.

Sure.

Thanks.

It’s only going to get more complicated and complex, and the costs are going to continue to rise.

I equate it to what the card brands and card processors have had to do over the last couple of decades when it comes to fraud.

Continue to add layers as the law of large numbers catches up.

It’s about taking out a basis point here or there.

The same thing when it comes to fraud and risk mitigation in financial institutions.

We’re just going to have to continue adding layers of oversight as the fraudsters get more sophisticated, get broader and deeper.

It gets more complicated.

The technology becomes more ubiquitous.

So it is one of those areas where, I know for community banks, for example, they have to lean harder into their trusted adviser.

Yeah, Sam.

It’s just such a messy problem that’s only getting messier.

You see some simpler examples of ways to try to reduce it.

I guess this one’s just in my mind because it had news yesterday.

Charlie, the neobank for the over-62 crowd, had launched a feature a while ago, but last year, that slowed down the payments if you’re sending money to a new person.

That’s a tiny example of a way that might reduce elder abuse.

But just recently they launched something that’s like an educational resource because another problem is adult children having these conversations with their parents.

It’s very touchy, and it digs into having agency and all that.

So they put out a really smart, digestible, under-five-minutes exercise that’s supposed to be an educational tool.

I’m seeing more tiny examples of ways to cut out some of this.

But generally speaking, fraud is out of control, and check fraud in particular is out of control.

Yeah.

Ron, I know this has been a topic that we’ve been around a lot too.

I think you were going to tee up some comments here around some things that we’ve heard from Laura Briscoe over at Abrigo.

You want to take it away?

Yeah.

Actually, Bailey, would you mind playing that clip from Laura?

Absolutely.

It’s not just driving efficiency to take cost.

It’s really driving efficiency to go secure growth.

One of the biggest challenges that financial institutions, particularly community financial institutions, have is access to talent.

They’re just not able to get the talent or the experienced talent that they need.

So relying on their partners to help them with technology that could bring better, faster and AI-infused capabilities in the technology is really critical.

So many of them, I think about 20%, are considering investing themselves in Gen AI.

But almost all of them are saying they really want to rely on their partners to help bring AI into the system starting next year.

Whether that’s with credit narratives, we’re in the compliance business and the loan origination business, so generating suspicious activity reports, really all the things that normal people are starting to do in ChatGPT.

How do we bring that into our products?

I think our customers were a little scared of that maybe two years ago, and now they’re saying, “Gosh, we’ve got to get on it.”

Both to keep up with the big banks, which are, Jamie Dimon’s got what, trillions of dollars invested in this, it seems like, and 600 data scientists or something crazy.

Just to try to help these CFIs compete, it’s so paramount.

They have to invest in technology.

No, let’s keep going.

We can just keep going.

I don’t think we have to re-edit stuff.

I think where Laura was going on the AI comment is important.

It actually worries me a little bit because I’m fearful that a lot of folks in the industry will look at the fraud and cyber-risk issues and just say, “Well, AI is coming. It’s going to fix the problem and take care of it for us.”

First of all, let’s remember that artificial intelligence, more specifically things like machine learning, have been tools used in fraud and risk management for, I don’t know, 40 years.

At least 40 years.

So this isn’t really about the technology.

Once again, it is about the data and the data that goes into it.

Part of the challenge and problem that the industry is facing, and it isn’t a “because faster payments is here” problem, because we haven’t even gotten into the fact that faster payments as a percentage of the total volume is minuscule at this point.

So that’s not the problem.

Things that Charlie is doing, Mary, that you mentioned, are good for that segment of the population.

That’s all good.

But this is not a panacea that’s going to fix the fraud and risk issues.

It really, I think, goes back to what Charles said.

It’s not just about relying on the technology providers and advisers, but really about creating more consortium and multi-institution collaboration.

That’s basically what was behind Early Warning Systems from the start with the large providers.

I like what Sardine, I think they’re U.K.-based, is doing, creating the collaboration at a more midsized-institution level.

I think that’s kind of where the right approach is going to come from.

But I do think we’ve got to be careful not to think of AI as some sort of panacea.

The other comment I’d make to Laura, and I think we’ll kind of get into this a little bit in the next segment, Sam, is that I think there’s a hell of a lot more than just 20% of the financial institutions out there looking to use and invest in generative AI tools.

Yeah.

It’s interesting.

I think another thing that Laura talked about was just that they’re struggling with, they may even want to do way more, but they either don’t feel like they have the talent or they are struggling to get the right types of talent motivated to come work at their bank.

Whether it’s junior talent coming out of school, or competing with the SoFis and the LendingClubs and the PayPals for certain types of talent.

I know, Bailey, we have another clip here coming up.

Pam Kaur from BankTech Ventures, which I think touches on this a little bit.

If you could go ahead and run that and then we’ll open the discussion back up on this topic.

I think one of the things that the banks are going to need to focus on is actually hiring.

Hiring the right talent to manage some of this new technology that’s out there.

Banks have not been the hot spot of tech and innovation, and that is reflected in the type of hires that come on.

A lot of the folks have been around for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, retiring at the banks, which, kudos to them for their loyalty.

But that’s not always the most innovative and fashionable thing for the banks to do.

So how do we encourage the next generation of bankers, who are going to be the customers of these banks, to come and work there and help kind of build that out and foster the change that’s needed?

I’ll be a bit of a contrarian to that idea that bankers are not as creative.

I think that’s one of those narratives I would love to see changed in the coming weeks and months and years.

Because when you have people who are experienced within an organization, they understand some of the cultural obstacles that occur that prevent things from getting done.

To ignore the fact that in heavily regulated industries like we’re in, there are times where moving a little bit slower actually is a smarter risk position to take.

I find that a number of banks get turned off when they hear a tech company say, “Well, you’ve been here too long. You’re not innovative. You’re not entrepreneurial.”

I’ve found there are a number of banks that are pushing, especially on the regional and community side, to really incorporate technologies in very meaningful, compelling ways.

They have clear outcomes in mind, and they’re starting to look at their talent recruitment plan much like they have a lending pipeline.

Now they have a talent pipeline and they’re managing it accordingly.

I just get a sense that that old chestnut of, “Well, banks don’t have the same type of appetite to grow and create,” I don’t know that that’s entirely true.

Well, you and I ran into Kelly Brown at the JAM FINTOP event last year.

I know she had some comments at AOBA this year that we captured.

I think she talks about some of the ways that they can continue to build out with, let’s just call it, a pipeline of talent.

I think that’s our next clip, Bailey, if you want to go ahead and run that.

From a succession standpoint, when we’ve had as much M&A as we’ve had, training programs are gone by the wayside.

The typical track that I was on with credit management training, all of those things are shrinking.

We’ve got to do more as an industry to promote young people wanting to get into our industry.

Yeah.

In the state of Wisconsin, we started a Marquette University banking program that’s specific to finance majors and got a group of banks nationwide to help with that because succession is the key.

It’s huge.

That’s spot on because I think, for COCC, we created a leadership program specifically for that.

So we had younger individuals that needed to understand a little bit more about leadership.

Specifically, they had the tech skills, they could understand that, but it’s the leadership piece that was missing for them.

So that was really important for us to see that with our own employees.

Being a great place to work is really a driving factor for many individuals looking for a new job.

I loved how both Kelly and Sue, in their own ways, gave their own examples as far as how to promote finance in this day.

Similar to AI and automation, and again, I keep saying this over and over again.

If I had a dollar every time I said leveraging AI, I think that those roles have to consistently evolve.

What I mean by that is, let’s start at the grassroots level.

Let’s look at maybe tellers, branch managers, and how do we as the executive team empower them?

I know when I was at a previous financial institution, one of my leadership initiatives, so to speak, was running Gallup StrengthsFinder.

It was very empowering for me to see what my top five strengths were.

Then I did that with my team.

We did it maybe every other year.

Also being involved in different projects.

Walking a day in the life of a C-suite person, what that looks like, what that means.

I’m a big proponent of, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you can’t be what you can’t see.

Oftentimes when I’m on the road, I hear from so many CEOs the lack of preparedness when they’re facing unexpected leadership changes within the next five years.

A lot of these folks are five to seven years from retirement.

Think about cultural preservation.

We think about that limited talent pool.

So I think that the emphasis now more than ever is to really take a look at who you already have in the building and how do you empower them?

How do you give them that confidence boost to take off?

That’s my take on it.

What do you guys think?

I’ll jump in because I think this is fundamentally a marketing problem.

When I say marketing problem, it’s because the banks and credit unions think about marketing as selling their products and services and positioning themselves to the community from a member and customer perspective, not from positioning the institution from an employment perspective.

The fintechs have come around in the last 10 years and have gone out to the environment and said, “Hey, do you want to have an impact, a big impact, on consumers’ lives? Come to the fintechs.”

And guess what?

They have a minuscule impact on the community compared to what the existing banks and credit unions have.

But they don’t position it that way.

They don’t say, “You want to have an impact? Come determine an impact on consumers’ financial lives.”

The fintechs have controlled the narrative on that.

That’s a marketing problem.

So yeah, there’s an opportunity to fix that.

Al?

Well, Ron, you’re saying something that just brings up a memory of when Jonathan Rowe was the chief marketing officer at nCino.

That was one of his primary responsibilities.

I always thought that Pierre Naudé, their CEO, was so smart to charge Jonathan with that.

So as he’s talking about the positioning and the messaging for nCino to the community, it was with an eye toward attracting the best talent.

One of the themes that has come up over the last few years is, how do you create an organization that is seen as a magnet for talent?

Stacy’s point of lifting up folks from the inside is important.

Also to create a culture where you want to contribute and you see a future, I think is huge.

I want to take this full circle back to Kelly because we gave her a GonzoBanker Award last year for, I think it was, “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus.”

Sam and I saw this.

To the marketing end, she was given by JAM FINTOP two minutes to kind of pitch what Ampersand does.

She got on stage and was so awesomely bold in saying, “They gave me two minutes. I only need one.”

She hammered the point that they help organizations with more than $250,000 in cash deposits reduce their risk of loss, then dropped the mic and walked out.

She had so many people, A, impressed with her presentation, but B, curious about what Ampersand could do for them.

I feel like you’re all spot on.

It’s marketing.

It’s communication.

It’s how do you tell a story that resonates?

Yeah.

I think we’re going to have to add a new award to our Gonzo.

If we have the “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” award, which just offends my sensitivities like you can’t even believe, I think we’re going to need to add a new award for the “If it ain’t got a jam, it ain’t worth a damn” award.

Because that’s really where the creativity comes in, Sam.

Okay.

I got my two.

That’s filed.

We’re going to file that one away.

No, I love it though.

Two things.

One is, offending your sensibility will be a new aspiration of mine, Ron.

I just love the way you characterize daily basis.

But also, to Kelly’s point, in terms of one of the other topics that we saw during the year, which was sort of this consolidation of bank, credit union, fintech and investors into one big soup.

I think Kelly’s a great example of that.

She started out as a banker.

She then became a bank co-founder, then private equity member, and now she’s a fintech founder.

So she’s sort of like, we call them a trifecta, three in one.

Bailey, if you tee up the next segment, we’ve got a quote in here from Curql Collective’s Nick Evens.

They’re a venture fund in the credit union space.

I think he’s got some interesting comments here.

That forward-looking, how do you become part of a platform?

How do you make your company a platform play?

I think, Stacy, you said it best.

Ashish identified this three years ago at his company, and he went out and we helped him do two acquisitions.

Eltropy bought Marsview and POPi/o.

His mentality now is, “Hey, I’m a platform company, and I’m going to grow and continue to be a platform company.”

Those are the things that I see as a problem right now.

There needs to be consolidation.

To consolidate or not consolidate, that is the question.

Look at Shakespeare, everyone.

I also think there’s magic, or just so much truth, in stay in your lane.

It’s okay to stay.

I think it’s okay.

When it comes to all these fintechs and what they’re trying to accomplish, you can’t be everything to everyone.

So that’s those three bars in and of itself.

That’s all I wanted to say there.

Yeah.

Hey, Ron, anything on this?

I know Nick talked a little bit about platform.

I think that might be a different way than we talk about platform, but I thought that was kind of an interesting point that he made around doing the acquisitions to kind of expand the portfolio so that it’s not just a real niche product play.

Any thoughts on that?

Yeah.

I think we’ve got to be careful.

I think what Nick was referring to when he said platform was thinking of it more from a technology platform, kind of more of a plug-and-play type of thing where your strategy from a technology-provider perspective is multiproduct.

I think that’s what he was referring to with Eltropy and Ashish Garg, who he was alluding to.

But I think, broader, we’ve got to be careful not to confuse how Nick was using the term platform with, say, an Amazon platform strategy, which is more of a business-model approach where you’re selling to both providers and consumers and users.

You’re sitting in the middle of that, basically generating revenue from both sides of the coin.

There are firms that I see out there, fintechs.

Lone Spark is a great example here in the Boston area, which is really trying to position itself as a small-business lending platform, meaning that it is providing services to the providers of small-business loans, the banks, as well as enabling services to even other technology companies who provide the technology for lending to those banks, who then ultimately are actually going to the small businesses.

But they’re not, you know, that’s not even where it is.

That’s a platform business model, not just a technology platform.

I think more and more that’s where we’re going.

Stacy, your point about consolidation, again, got to look at that from both the technology-provider perspective as well as the financial-institution perspective.

I think we’ll continue to see, especially now with the administration change, a little bit more optimism on M&A within the industry.

I know on this topic of kind of the mashup in the industry of the investor world, I think we have a clip, Bailey, from Nathan Baumeister.

If you want to go ahead and run that, I’d love to get Al’s perspectives on this guy.

Al, you know Nathan as well from our AFT circles.

I think for the longest time, the technology providers within the banking industry, or the fintechs, were seen as something scary, bad, perhaps competitive.

Some folks that you had to stay away from.

I’m just really seeing this tangible collapse of the communities for all of us to realize that we actually all coexist and have to work together to be able to do it.

So it’s not just reaching out to competitors between bankers to bankers, credit unions to credit unions, or fintechers to fintechers, but actually how can the whole ecosystem come together?

I think one of the most tangible places that I’ve seen that come to action is all the different VC funds that have been put together, where financial institutions are actually the ones that are putting the money in place to invest in and drive growth for fintech companies and technology providers who are working on solutions that are helpful for the greater ecosystem, and then putting it back into the marketplace to make it all better, to make sure that they’re doing stuff to help the industry move forward.

Yeah.

What Nathan’s talking about is super important, but I think it’s something that most everyone recognizes.

You’ve got Canapi, JAM FINTOP, Mendon Venture Partners.

You can go down the line.

Patriot, which backs Ampersand.

They’re able to have these LP bases that have an interest, an appetite and an expectation that they get a front-row seat to see what’s happening.

When Nathan’s talking, I’m just, I promise, props, bring my guitar so I could be official, much like Sam is.

As I say, you’ve got to figure out who are you going to play with?

Who’s in your band?

So figuring out not just where you’re getting money from, but are these organizations giving you the exposure to the type of risk-forward-thinking institutions that can actually work with you?

Now I think I’m unfortunately bringing Sam’s guitar into focus, but I again...

And you’ve got a new hat on too, my friend.

It’s just cool to see somebody like Nathan, who is known for doing backflips at certain conferences, but is a tech company that was spun out of Eastern Bank up in Boston, doing some really great work on behalf of community banks that need that spark of innovation and creativity.

Good stuff.

I want to be mindful of schedules because I think we’re over time here, guys.

Thanks for your flexibility.

We’ll try to get this wrapped pretty quick.

Moving on to our last topic here, go-to-market effectiveness, whether it’s a fintech or a bank.

Just to Ron’s earlier point around there being a broader marketing problem.

This has been a big topic.

Mary, I don’t know if you want to maybe tee this one up a little bit in terms of one of our first clips.

You know what, Bailey?

Let’s get into it, and I’ll tee it up after as a recap.

Sounds great.

I like to watch for what’s the truth under the covers of the pitch.

Obviously Finovate is all about the seven minutes of the demo pitch, but how can you discern who’s really got a good story underneath?

That answer is actually going to be different for everybody and the perspective that they’re bringing.

Maybe you actually do need a Gen AI-flavored solution because it helps you get started in that area.

But maybe you’re far beyond that as an organization and your goals are a little more concrete or larger-scale than that, and you actually need a real AI solution, if you can call it that.

You actually have some really good defined use cases that you need to scale, and you need something different than, “I just need a veneer on top to help my humans interact with this information in a different way,” which those tools are particularly well suited for.

Okay.

I’ll be honest.

My computer froze during the replay of that clip.

Well, Sam, I tossed the ball.

No, no, no.

It’s no issue.

I think one of my big takeaways there, and I would love Stacy’s input on this as well because she was there with me with Barb, is that Barb was first of all talking about digging into the pitches.

She wanted to get a clear sense of what it...

Back to Al’s point around Kelly Brown.

Kelly basically said, “Look, I don’t even need two minutes. I’ve got this one minute or less.”

Barb at Coastal Community, she’s looking at these pitches at Finovate.

Like many of us, what she’s finding is five or six times out of 10, it’s a nothingburger and they take way too long to get to the point.

It makes it very difficult to get the message across.

I think many of our banks and credit unions that we see out there in the market are struggling with this too.

To Ron’s point, it’s like product, services and fees.

How are you different?

So that was my takeaway from it.

What about you, Stacy?

For sure.

I’ll just add, get to the point.

You said this numerous times.

We were at FinovateFall in New York, and you and I simultaneously sat in on a lot of those seven-minute demos.

Maybe four minutes in, I’m like, “Okay, what are you solving?”

If you put the hat of an executive over at an FI on, you have to answer who, what, where, when, why.

What is the solve?

What’s in it for me?

I think we’ve all said this in previous podcasts and episodes and conversations.

Then that lands the opportunity of an organic, “Hey, I’m looking forward to a follow-up call or a follow-up meeting.”

Then the rest is history.

So big on storytelling, as Al, you mentioned earlier today.

Get to the point.

What are you solving?

I think Barb just said it so beautifully.

I have it all over my screen, “the truth under the covers.”

I think, honestly, I know Kelly nailed it in a minute, a minute and a half, but there’s pure magic in understanding and practicing what that looks like in under a minute because that’s all you have.

I was in an elevator with a couple of executives a few months ago and I nailed the pitch in 35 seconds, literally from the 20th floor to the first floor.

So maybe fintechs have to be on an actual elevator and start practicing over and over and over again.

Because again, these folks are looking at demos consistently, are getting reached out to constantly.

Well, and Al, Melissa Kopp from Neural Payments was chatting with you and I, and Sarah Fankhauser from DCI and Jacob Bouer from Array, about this topic, about getting to the point.

I don’t know if you want to go ahead and tee that one up.

I’d love to get Al’s take on that, or Ron’s take, either one of you guys, just to get a sense for how Melissa goes about it.

We have one slide that I love that actually has four bullets on it and puts the problems in real-life examples.

Getting them to think about these things in terms of how it affects their cardholders, their members, that’s how it clicks.

Perfect.

That’s how it clicks.

What do you think, guys?

A-plus.

A-plus.

But Sam, I’m now back in memory lane.

Ron, maybe you remember this, but the early Finovate demos...

Wow.

They were strange.

There was a lot of role-playing.

I recall, sort of buried it in my heart and soul, but there was awkward role-playing.

I do know this for a fact.

Fintech people will hire actors to train them how to speak in front of a crowd because there’s a true art to charisma.

Totally.

I mean, and I think the other thing about whether it’s jumping on an elevator to physically actually move up and down floors, to Stacy’s point, is give yourself some type of a physical barrier or limitation, or hire actors.

I think the other thing about it is get creative.

Do something different.

Get the heck out of your office.

As I’m thinking back on the conversation that we had with Melissa and also with Jacob, I think Jacob had a point or two around creativity.

Bailey, if you want to go ahead and tee up the clip on that, we’ll talk about it.

I think we all need to do a better job of marketing and branding.

We’re in an industry that’s not necessarily the most fun, let’s call it, right?

I mean, it’s banking.

It’s serious.

It has a lot of risk in it.

So for us to step outside our comfort zone and think about things differently is something that I think we’re all after.

You know what else I loved, though?

Mary reminded me of something you’ve said before.

I’m trying to remember.

You had, I think it was Tanley Stearns, on your Money Isn’t Everything podcast, and one of you said something like, “This is either boring or this industry is not fun.”

You heard Jacob on here say something like, “It’s scary. It’s not always fun.”

I think you made a comment, “Hey, I tell people all the time, we have fun. We know how to have fun in this business,” right?

Yeah.

I have an interesting perspective because I did not purposefully join this industry.

I covered high-end jewelry, fell into it, and was like, “Oh no, this is awful. I’m covering the debt collectors and the tools they use to collect money. How did this happen?”

But then when I realized this is about an identity crisis, it’s like, what a drama.

There are so many dramas in this industry.

This is a really colorful industry.

There are so many plots.

So many scary plots.

And a lot of fun things too.

I love the movie, or I did, I wonder if I would now, Thank You for Smoking.

I feel like this industry has a similar problem.

It’s better than smoking, obviously.

But it needs a spin because it doesn’t seem like the natural place a lot of creative people would naturally go to or think of as an opportunity to rethink things.

Yeah.

Listen, I tripped over this industry too.

I remember telling a friend of mine that recommended that I work for a bank, I’m like, “Why would I do that? It sounds boring.”

He told me all the reasons why.

Then I started out at a bank and I tripped over this industry.

I woke up and I was, I don’t know, 50 and had three kids, and all of a sudden it was like I was grown up.

But I guess just a couple, few quick closing things.

Out of gratitude, first of all, I’m thankful for every one of you guys.

I feel fortunate I get to work with you every day.

Secondly, I’m fortunate that we get to work with a lot of really fun people like Kelly Brown.

She’s just full of energy, full of solutions, full of getting to the point.

But also, you heard Jacob there.

One of the things that Jacob pointed out on the podcast was he was traveling with his dog Remy.

Talk about fun.

So let’s make sure we have a clip of Remy up at some point, or a pic at some point.

Also, I had a great chance, I know Al, you too, we’ve had a chance to work with Tom Shen many times this year.

Anyway, the point is these guys both travel with their dogs.

I find that really intriguing.

We love dogs here, Charlotte, my wife Charlotte, and I.

So we’ve been talking up the dogs of fintech as a little bit of a ruse.

But you know what?

It’s a lot of fun to be around all you guys.

And no, I’m not calling you dogs.

I’m saying it’s fun to be around all you guys as well as the dogs of fintech.

Then, you know, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t say I’m really pumped for the Gonzo Awards that are coming up.

I’ve even got my merch out.

So I would just encourage everybody that’s joining the podcast today, thanks for joining, but also make sure and join us on the Gonzo Awards.

With that, I want to say thanks to everybody, and see you out there on the road.

Thanks, Sam.

See you guys.