2025 in Fintech: The Best Insights from Fintech Hustle Podcast

Well, hello out there. This is Sam Kilmer, managing director at Cornerstone Advisors and your host of the Fintech Hustle podcast.

I’m here today bringing you the Fintech Hustle Flashback episode of 2025, where we look back, to quote my favorite recent band, Lord Huron, “Looking Back,” the lead single on their new album.

You’ve got to check it out. It’s called Cosmic Selector Vol. 1.

Anyway, looking back a little bit, but not exactly. Let’s just call it a little bit of a greatest hits of what’s happened in the year, but not quite a greatest hits because we’ve had so many great guests.

I’ve had the fortune of having not only so many great guests, but so many great guest co-hosts on the podcast this year that I don’t know that we could actually do a greatest hits and do it justice.

But let’s just say five or six or seven cuts that we pulled that we thought were maybe the zeitgeist of the year, that just maybe kind of represented some of the vibe that was going down.

We talked a little bit about, well, we talked a lot about AI.

We talked about stablecoin.

We talked about data.

We talked about go-to-market.

We talked about a lot of things.

But it’s been a great year.

Hey, let’s get right to it.

Here comes the flashback.

Okay, on this first flashback we’ve got here for you, Savvy AI CEO Maya Mikhailov joined Jason Henrichs from Alloy Labs, Andy Ivankovich from Baker Hill and I on the balcony, well, in the hall on the balcony, at FinovateSpring right there on the harbor.

It was fantastic.

What I really thought was interesting is Maya covers kind of the onslaught of AI and the mentality that she has seen really evolve in the C-suite of banks and some bankers, and maybe some retiring bankers or bankers later in their career.

Check it out right here.

I think one of the biggest problems in banking is some bankers, not all, some bankers hope they can retire before all of this hits them.

Indeed.

They’re looking at the tsunami of technology coming at them and of change, but really people change too.

They’re saying, “Gosh, I hope this is going to be someone else’s problem and I can just kind of coast by.”

When you then add uncertainty to the scenario, the time for coasting by is actually past.

I thought that was a really interesting point that Maya made.

I should also point out that particular trip to San Diego was really cool.

One really cool moment, I was there to speak at the Baker Hill conference and I got a chance to meet Malcolm Gladwell, the legendary author, who did also a great chat about the cultural impact of AI.

You can check out a lot of his observations out there on YouTube and wherever you want.

But I have to say, I’ve got a picture somewhere.

I’ll have to find it for you, of where Malcolm was meeting me and doing a meet-and-greet.

Let’s just say Malcolm didn’t look terribly excited to meet me.

I get it.

I’m not that exciting.

I’m not Malcolm Gladwell.

But pretty funny.

So that was a great segment.

Thanks, Maya.

Thanks to Maya and Jason and Andy for joining us on the podcast.

Okay, in this Fintech Hustle Flashback moment, InvestiFi’s president, Todd Clark, gave some great points, I thought, on a lot of different things, but especially on his points on stablecoin.

He was joined with me on the rooftop of the FINTOP Summit in Nashville with DefenseStorm CEO Steve Soukup, Encore Bank COO Erin Simpson, and Posh CEO and founder Karan Kashyap.

Would you check it out right now?

For banks, you should be watching and paying attention, but you don’t need to leap.

Yes.

There’s nothing you need to do today that you can’t do tomorrow or probably even third quarter next year.

What you should be thinking about, though, and the most important thing for you as a financial institution, is going to be taking stable, converting it to fiat and back and forth.

Everything else is still very theoretical.

Very, “We hope one day maybe we might could.”

What you have to watch out for is a customer coming in that has stable that they got somewhere, probably through some sort of international remittance or something like that, and they want to turn it back into actual money.

So today, that’s what you should be thinking about.

Take a little off your plate.

I just found that really insightful from Todd.

Todd has a lot of experience, having worked in the industry for a long time.

I just have to also say how grateful I am for Erin Simpson and Karan and Steve and Todd for all joining there at the FINTOP Summit.

I also have to share a really cool story.

When I was on the way home from the summit, my wife and I had tickets to see the Grace Potter concert in Indianapolis.

If you don’t know who Grace Potter is, you should check it out.

This is her album, Daylight.

I’m a big fan of Grace.

Anyway, I was flying back from Nashville to Indy and right before the flight doors closed, Grace Potter sauntered onto the airplane and sat down two rows, two seats in front of me.

I wasn’t a stalker.

I didn’t go introduce myself.

I just went to the show that night, and she crushed.

So if you don’t know who Grace Potter is, check it out.

Okay, check out this next Fintech Hustle Flashback where FINTOP Capital’s Adam Epshteyn talks a little bit about AI and how it’s changing regulatory compliance and fraud, and just kind of having all kinds of implications on not just efficiency inside a bank, but also in future mergers and acquisitions and just competitiveness overall.

Compliance.

Up until now, everyone’s focused on know your customer, KYC, and now a lot of the tools are KYA, know your agent, because if a million agents are going to be pinging cores, that’s going to be a priority.

So it’s not necessarily happening today, but we have to be thinking about years from now.

For today, the banks really are just looking for back-office efficiency.

Where can I use AI to rip out costs, improve manual labor?

I’d say that in many cases we are at a tipping point where, if you think about fraud, the statistics are that the AI and the human might be equal.

But we know that the AI is probably the dumbest it’s ever going to be today, and tomorrow it’s going to be smarter, and a year from now it’s going to be smarter than the existing employee.

So starting to prepare for that world.

I think banks are going to have massive efficiency gains for the ones that lean in early.

They’ll be more profitable.

They’ll get a higher multiple.

Those are the banks that are going to start buying other banks and rolling up the industry.

I think that’s where that hamster wheel is going to really take off.

Thanks to Adam for that really insightful point about what we can start to read the tea leaves on the impact of AI in banking and in financial services.

I should also point out that we were joined on that episode by Blend head of digital transformation Rava Ralph, Zafin senior vice president David Ladic, and Cornerstone Advisors principal Kelly Schultz.

Had a great spirited conversation about something that David referred to as purposeful AI.

Rava also had a lot of observations from her experiences not only at Blend, but also in her prior world at several credit unions, as well as Wells Fargo, Chase and Citi.

Thanks again to them for joining us on the podcast.

In this next Fintech Hustle Flashback, Lumin Digital’s chief commercial officer, Kelly Mahalik, joined myself as well as Kelly Schultz and Kinective CEO Stephen Baker.

One of the things that I found great about this discussion was, it’s not talked about very often, but Kelly got into how to organize a fintech to go to market in this world where the difference between what’s marketing and what’s sales in this content-marketing kind of world is so subtle.

It has a lot to do with how she has chosen to organize the company to go to market.

So check it out.

Quite typically, the trajectory typically is a CRO will inherit marketing or marketing will roll under a CRO.

I obviously have a biased view, but I think then your marketing department becomes transactional and sales support versus strategic and client-experience focused.

So when you look at our funnel or our campaign plans, it’s all integrated.

We’re creating pods where marketing and sales own accounts and are working together.

We’re no longer doing old-school marketing, like fill out this form and maybe some BDR will call you and bother you.

It’s the last person you want to talk to.

So we’re really rethinking the entire experience.

We’re only able to do that because there’s one person on top and you don’t have that struggle or that fear anymore.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to jump on you.

I love that.

I think this is something everyone struggles with, right?

Because marketing is under pressure.

You’re spending money.

I think this is a traditional thing, in the boardroom you see marketing talks about leads and website traffic and everything else, and the sales guy or gal is rolling their eyes, like, where are my bookings?

So I think at the end of the day, and I’m curious how you solve for this, Kelly, I think there’s a similar problem with product and engineering.

My analog there is always, you’re in the same canoe.

Engineering’s canoe, if it’s going down, guess what?

The whole boat is going under the waves.

So you’ve got to row that boat together.

I think this is so much the same example.

The way we solve for it ultimately is we all sign up for bookings.

There’s a marketing-driven bookings element, but my marketing leader is also tied to the overall bookings number.

That’s how I solve for it.

Because I think you’re right, Kelly.

Either you have to have one chief that’s running the whole show, or you’ve got to find a different way to kind of stitch them together.

All right.

Thanks a lot to Kelly Mahalik for those observations.

I should also point out to Stephen, who also had some comments there as well.

Stephen Baker from Kinective.

It was great for Kelly Schultz and I to talk with Kelly Mahalik and Stephen Baker.

Great episode and just a real state of the industry on what many fintech companies are going through and sorting out their go-to-market, whether it’s B2B2C, B2C or B2B.

Okay, check out this Fintech Hustle Flashback from ICBA’s senior vice president, and also BankTech Ventures general partner, Wayne Miller, from FinovateFall, where he was joined with me as well as Tiffany Montez from eMarketer and Har Rai Khalsa, co-founder of Swaystack.

Wayne gives a really nice conversation here around data.

Check it out.

What is screaming to me is we have all this data, right?

We know so much about our customers.

How do we align our strategies and that data to effectively serve our markets?

Okay.

In addition to Wayne’s points on data, this next Fintech Hustle Flashback from Quontic’s chief operating officer, Will Bryant, from the AFT conference in spring in Miami, Coral Gables, where I was joined by Parlay Finance CEO Alex McLeod as well and Jack Henry CTO Ben Metz on the rooftop there in Coral Gables.

Check out what Will had to say about data.

There also seems to be a little bit of a question around, okay, well, say we do have all this data and we know our customers really well.

How do we motivate the front line to talk to our clients?

Okay.

It was great to hear what Will had to say there on the rooftop in Coral Gables about data.

Between what he had to say and what Wayne Miller had to say, I just found that really insightful.

So data was a big topic.

Stablecoin, a big topic.

Go-to-market, a big topic.

Obviously AI was probably the bigger topic, and it really, really started to dominate very early in the year.

I should also point out about that AFT Spring Summit.

When I was on my way there, I made a little bit of a pit stop going from Indianapolis down to Miami.

I want to make a shout-out to my colleague at Cornerstone, Brad Mason, for getting me involved in something called the Give Team.

The Give Team is an endurance team based out of the New Image Youth Center in the Parramore neighborhood of Orlando, Florida.

Brad and his involvement with the Give Team.

The Give Team basically did a walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to remember the important civil rights sacrifices and that same walk that happened among civil rights leaders 60 years ago.

So I want to say thanks to Brad.

I wear my Give Team jersey and merch.

I’m not just trafficking in vinyl records over here at Fintech Hustle, but also in lots of different merch.

I should also point out that, in addition to my Fintech Hustle bucket hat here, I’m very grateful for some friends over at Plinqit who sent a nice hat over here.

I think there are some sunglasses around here somewhere that they sent over to make sure that we stay sun-safe out there.

So I would say to you here from Fintech Hustle, whether you’re on a balcony or you’re on a rooftop outdoor gathering, stay sun-safe.

Whether you’re follically challenged like your Fintech Hustle host here or not.

But I want to say thanks to Kirsten Longnecker at Plinqit for sending over the hat and sunglasses merch to help keep me safe in the sun.

Whether it’s a wide-brim fedora change-out here from Q2, thanks to the guys and gals over at Q2, or whether it’s a Fintech Hustle bucket hat, make sure you’re keeping sun-safe.

I want to thank all our fellow hustlers out there for joining me this year on the podcast.

That also includes all of our co-hosts.

Grateful for a fantastic 2025.

We’ve got a rock-star cast of already confirmed guests going into 2026.

We’ll see you out there on the road wherever bankers, fintechers and investors meet for unscripted chats in the hall.

See you soon.