Fintech Hustle // Keren Moynihan and Will Furrer

What’s bugging the hell out of you? What’s working and what’s not working?

Everything’s working. So, yeah.

Okay, sorry.

I think we can all agree that there’s a line in the sand, and that line is 2020.

Before 2020, there wasn’t even an acknowledgment that there was a problem. We were all going to market and saying, “Hey, Houston, there’s a problem,” and they said, “No, there’s not. We’re digitizing.”

That word is so all-encompassing that it doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to all people.

But in March of 2020, most financial institutions we were talking to were placing orders for laptops. One multinational ran out of B2B suppliers and was calling Costco. That’s a true story. That’s not hyperbole.

What’s working is that there’s an acknowledgment that we’re at a real turning point, an inflection point. If banks and credit unions are going to serve customers, they’re going to have to make some changes quickly.

They’re deciding now what they’re going to build or buy, and then they’re deciding why they should buy from you in real time.

Last year, they were just kicking tires and deciding if there was a problem.

Well, that’s the working part, right?

The pandemic kicked their ass, and that’s good for you selling them technology, but there’s got to be another side of this coin. Stuff that’s not working.

There’s got to be stuff that’s bugging you. What are those things?

You guys would kick my butt if I didn’t just say it truthfully, because that’s what this forum is for.

What’s not working is that, while there’s an acknowledgment of a problem, it usually manifests in a general way.

I’ve heard a lot of financial institutions saying things like, “We have to digitize,” and, “We have mandates for data.”

The challenge with that high-level problem statement is that it could mean anything.

It could be about marketing opportunities. It could be about deposits. It could be about lending.

If there’s not a specific use case defined, then there really isn’t a viable solution.

Boss Insights was guilty of this in 2019 ourselves. We’d say, “We’re going to solve lending everywhere.”

That’s not a use case.

PPP lending is a use case. Traditional solutions with accounting is a use case.

That’s what I would challenge the industry to do, get really specific about what you want solved so we can come in and say, “We’ve solved this, and here’s how we can show it.”

Yeah. Great.

Will, what’s your take on what’s working and not working?

My sentiments are pretty similar to Karen’s.

What I see working is that there’s really an acknowledgment that the experience layer matters.

What I’m hearing bank executives talk about in every single conversation is, “Make it easy. Make it smooth. Make it elegant.”

Smooth, elegant and easy, those are the new hard.

They’re still reliant on all these back-end legacy technologies, but easy is the new hard. Convenience is the new loyalty.

All of these things are demonstrating that banks are officially paying attention to the experience they’re providing, not only to their internal team members and the processes they run through, which are critical for bank efficiency, but also to the borrower journey, the account-holder journey and the business or commercial customer’s experience with the bank’s brand.

That is now permanent.

The experience layer really matters.

What’s not working, and the thing that continues to be a nagging issue, is this concept of data.

“Just give me the data. I want all the data. Let me see all the data and make it amazing. Let me help change my bank.”

With the premium on data talent, I think it’s far better to subscribe to data solutions and data talent than to try to build out those teams yourselves.

I think that’s really an unsustainable model that financial institutions continue to run toward, that they can essentially create the same kind of talent pool you might have at Ohio State University, Virginia Tech or Arizona State University.

You just can’t bring these people together to solve these violent and crazy data challenges in all these fragmented markets around the country.

There simply isn’t enough talent density.

Considering using other people to help solve those vexing data problems is going to have to become a realization, because that’s not working right now.

Everyone wants to build their own data team.

Yeah.

Sam, I’m going to get you into the conversation in one second, but I want to pose one other question for Will and Karen.

Will, do you see financial institutions having a chief data officer making a difference in the problem?

Why don’t you go first, and Karen, I’ll ask you the same question.

I think it’s a little too early to tell.

I’m not trying to paint it as if it’s a bad thing. I’m just not sure you’re going to get the returns you believe you’re going to get by attempting to build out that entire infrastructure yourself.

Again, it’s based on statistics. It’s based on talent density.

There’s a reason we’re moving compute to the cloud. That’s where the talent is, the density of the servers and the compute power.

I think it’s the same thing with data. It’s coalescing around really interesting companies that are great to work for and have a lot of upside.

The really talented people aren’t necessarily seeking to go to financial institutions, at least in the current state.

It’s too early to tell whether a chief data officer can actually move the needle at a financial institution.

As long as they’re acknowledging that they need outside partnerships with rich, young, new, growing companies, I think that’s an important realization and that can make a difference.

Yeah.

Karen, what are your thoughts on that?

I’m going to be really annoying and say I agree with Will again, but I would qualify it a little bit.

A chief data officer is going to make use of the data.

In 2019, Boss Insights was in the UK. We were one of five companies selected to go on a trade mission, and we were sitting in the audience with incumbent banks and challenger banks in an economy that already had open banking much farther down the road than we’ve gotten here in North America.

A question came from the audience saying, “Hey, incumbent banks, why don’t you just use your data and crush the challenger banks? You have it all.”

The thing is, this statement of data being the new oil, you can’t do much with raw data. You have to actually cook it a little bit.

A financial statement is not an approved loan.

Debt-service coverage could be, but only when compared to other products.

So insights are the oil.

The part that would be great in terms of partnership is getting data aggregators to provide the source and then having internal data-strategy people look at creating machine-learning models.

That would be a great partnership between the internal and external because they’re completely different skill sets.

I was sitting in that audience and just wanted to scream, “We can scrub that for you.”

We’re still nowhere ahead even after COVID.

What we’ve solved are very minute challenges to move the dial forward, but we’re still stuck on the fact that there’s a lot of information internally at banks, and customers and employees are not getting the benefit of it because we haven’t sorted that out.

You’d never know that reading the press and glowing reviews of how machine learning has transformed everything.

Well, Sam, go ahead. Jump in there.

I was just going to say, to Karen’s point, I think if there’s one area where there has been some progress, Ron, the question was almost premised on the idea that they have a chief data officer.

I was actually asking whether the presence of a chief data officer made a difference. I was wondering if these guys had seen institutions with a chief data officer being a benefit.

I think that’s actually one thing that’s improved, that there are some of these characters now.

There weren’t before.

I was at an event four years ago where there was a word cloud being populated in real time. The question was, “Who’s the chief data officer in your bank? CFO, CEO, etc.?”

Somebody wrote in “Doug,” and Doug was one of the top responses.

There was just nobody there.

At least there are some people now, and I see resources in strategic plans.

Yeah. Cool.

Sam, you want to take that?

Yeah.

One thing I wanted to ask about, as we talk about what’s working and not working, but something you brought up, Karen, was faster decisions.

People are not just showing up and kicking the tires, which gets into how they’re buying, but also what they’re buying right now.

What’s hot?

Is that any different from what they bought in 2019 or 2018?

Yeah. I see huge changes.

When we’re in discussions with banks, credit unions and private lenders, we have to get down to brass tacks.

We have all these exciting conversations about innovation and the stars, moon and sky. People bring up Yelp reviews and whatnot.

But what they’re buying is access to accounting information that is verified by accountants if they’re running traditional lending models.

If they’re an alternative lender, they’re buying real-time payments information.

The reason they would choose us over others is because we have the flexibility for both models.

We’re in the digital-transformation bucket, which sounds a lot like innovation, but one is stars, moon and sky. “We want to have real-time credit decisioning, and we’re going to change our decisions.”

There’s no credit-risk officer excited to go fix the regulatory model.

Right now, people are a little exhausted just making sure the machine is still running.

They want to make it easier so that the very expensive talent they’re hiring to be relationship managers can focus on relationship management.

I wish they had that when I was a banker. I spent most of my time doing that manually.

Yeah. I was there with you in the trenches.

Will, what are you seeing? What are they buying right now?

I think we’re seeing a lot of traction around this convergence of the requirements for the commercial banker, the person with the sales quota, to not just focus on the credit sale, but also on selling treasury services.

What we’re seeing is this real convergence of those two functions within the bank.

I think you’re starting to see this jack-of-all-trades, or maybe it’s the birth of the true relationship manager, the one responsible for attaching all those products and services to these critical commercial customers, where 90% of the profitability in the bank is actually driven.

What we’re seeing people buy is technology to facilitate that journey and those conversations with those critical accounts.

What we really believe is that data will be valuable, not just the data itself but the insights.

We actually think those insights turn into coaching.

As everyone continues to work remote, we need to make sure the right data is in the right relationship banker’s hands at the right time so they do not lose credibility with those critical commercial customers.

The way they lose credibility is by leaving that meeting without getting down to the brass tacks of the deal.

If they have to leave, go back and talk to the used-car manager and then return two weeks later, they’ll have lost the deal.

They must be in a position with the right data and the right requirements to have a meaningful conversation with that person and coordinate that with treasury services, because that’s where the profitability will actually be driven on both sides of the balance sheet.

It’s interesting that you mentioned treasury because I think we had this on the last Fintech Hustle too.

This topic keeps coming back up.

There are all these consumer-based topics, yet commercial is high on the list for so many banks.

The thing is, because we were all bankers, it did not matter how thorough you got with a business client. When you went and brought in the specialist, the product specialist would repeat the conversation.

It did not matter how much you prepared that product specialist, they’d have to repeat the conversation.

The commercial account manager is cringing in their chair because the business owner hates that.

Why can’t we present them with information?

The same thing with financials.

They’re always looked at for lending, but we’re dying for partners who will convince the banks that this can be a cross-selling opportunity.

What Q2 is doing is incredible.

The banks do not right now have the mandate to do that themselves. They’re relying on human capital for it, and technology could solve a lot of it.

Well, you mentioned there, I thought it was interesting that you started off by saying you see the organizations coming together.

The target for treasury and the target for lending are increasingly under the same chief banking officer or similar structure.

Yes, technology can help solve some of these things, but the impetus, to your point about human capital, Karen, started with organizational dysfunction and misalignment.

Now we have more banks where they’re organizing themselves around customer segments or industry niches or something where the lending need and the payments or treasury need are aligned with some of the same people.

You don’t at least have lots of people chasing fragmented use cases.

You mentioned earlier, Karen, use cases.

I think what’s worse is if you’ve got 15 different people chasing fragmented use cases. That’s way less interesting than if you have one person saying, “I’ve got three big ones.”

Yeah.

The challenge is that you can’t have enough meetings. You can’t run enough cycles with those people.

There’s not time to call every specialist within the bank to go out and have those conversations because time is at a premium today, not only for these commercial customers, but also for the bankers.

They’re having to get on a Zoom. Maybe they meet in person, but the dynamic has really changed.

What they’re starting to see is, how fast can you do things and how efficiently can you do those things?

That’s really where relationships are built today.

How fast are you at doing it? How efficient and intelligent are you in that conversation?

You must have the whole relationship data available to you at the time of that conversation.

You just have to.

You can’t play the used-car salesperson game anymore.

It’s simply not acceptable in financial services.

I think you’re going to see this convergence continue to happen, and I think it’s going to change the balance sheet of these banks.

That’s what we believe.

So that’s what they’re buying.

Yeah.

What do they... Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Karen.

I was just going to say there are some really quick, easy wins.

When companies have 20 people, they need group solutions.

If you’re connected to their HR, you know that in advance.

A data provider gives that, and a workflow organizer presents it to the team that needs to see it.

That puts the bank in the position to, for the first time, proactively approach businesses.

They’re not waiting.

What banks are doing right now is looking at bank statements to see if the customer is using a product, and then they try to outsell the competition.

What I think Will and I are violently agreeing to is that you should be knowing this in advance and saying, “I have the solution to your problems. I am your financial therapist. I will fix it all.”

That’s when you get loyalty. That’s when you get the full share of wallet.

Financial therapist.

I think that’s one of our first hashtags.

When you said that, you reminded me James Robert Lay calls it, “Be their Yoda.”

I think you’re in the right ballpark there.

That’s way better.

Lots of ideas.

Ron, were you going to add something there?

Yeah, thanks.

I’m certainly not out in the field like Will and Karen are trying to sell things, but we’re halfway through the data collection for our annual What’s Going On in Banking survey that looks at what banks and credit unions say they’re going to be buying.

For the 132nd year in a row, digital account opening is at the top of the list once again.

That continues to amaze me.

Why haven’t you guys got this done yet?

Not you guys being Will and Karen, but the banks and credit unions.

The interesting thing I calculated is that, according to the most recent survey results, if you take the banks and credit unions that said they have already, in the past three years, deployed a new digital account-opening system, and add the ones who say they’re going to do it in 2021, basically half the industry will have implemented or replaced DAO in the past three to four years.

That means at some point, maybe by the 135th year of our survey, that number is going to start going down.

The reason I bring this up is that, to me, it means they’re not buying other things that could really move the needle in the business.

I’m still not convinced that just putting in digital account opening adds new business.

I think people are already making decisions to do business with that bank or credit union, and you may lose some if you don’t have it.

I’m afraid they’re not really going after some bigger long-term issues with their technology buying.

I’m just impressed.

Sorry about that.

I just want to say, Ron, I’m impressed that we have research that goes all the way back to the Ulysses S. Grant administration.

That’s enough contribution for today.

Sorry about that.

Will, you were going to say something of actual value?

No, I was just going to pile on.

If you’re asking, there is a big push toward this because of the moment we’re in.

This is a run-the-bank initiative. You need to be able to run new accounts digitally and online.

I think what happens when you start talking about online account opening is there are a lot of stakeholders that come into this, and it can turn into a very complex decision.

We should really be focusing on the experience, smoothing that experience out and allowing that access.

So yes, Ron, I agree with you.

It’s interesting that it continues to be the number-one thing people talk about.

While I think it’s absolutely important, it’s one of those projects that everyone gets involved in. Everyone has an opinion on that one.

We all know what everyone says about opinions.

They should be thinking about it more as a run-the-bank requirement.

At Q2, we believe you can’t have digital banking without having it. It’s part of the new definition of that service because digital actually is banking.

It’s an absolute requirement.

We have to stop separating it out and allowing it to be this one little feature purchase.

We should be purchasing it when we think about the whole journey for those customers.

It’s not a channel. It’s the thing, right?

It’s the thing.

That’s right.

So that’s what they’re buying.

We’ve had some good violent agreements there.

Let’s try for some disagreements.

What are they not buying right now?

What is not happening right now in terms of things they may have been buying in 2019 or ways they were buying in 2019?

What’s not happening?

What I would say is it’s not so much about 2019 versus 2020. It’s about controlling the conversation.

What I was going to say about the last discussion is, I’m sure Will has been there, I’ve been there, where you get into something like account opening.

Boss Insights was actually in the running this year for account opening, but we’re data for lending software.

I think that’s the biggest thing that’s not working.

They’re interviewing a lot of different technology vendors for the same job rather than taking the expert in the one space.

When you get into digital account opening and go through the flowcharts, somewhere on there, whether it’s posted or done electronically, there’s, “This is Sarah’s job,” or, “This is Will’s job.”

That person goes on vacation or gets promoted, and the whole thing breaks down.

There is digitization and transformation, but there’s also a lot of manual.

That’s what’s not working.

When we’re in sales conversations, just as often as people are asking us about QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks and Sage, they’re asking us about Yelp reviews.

What’s not working is the constant discussion about things that are light-years away versus focusing on the here and now.

The industry, and that speaks for all of us, is in a moment of crisis.

There are sexier industries to be in.

If we’re going to attract talent, we have to give them an excellent experience.

I was a banker from 2010 to 2014.

I don’t know that bankers today want to go through what we had to go through back then.

It must seem like you’re operating without any automation whatsoever.

What we do is really try to focus the conversation away from, “Let’s take user reviews as a way to lend or as a way to get treasury service,” and talk brass tacks.

Show me your flowchart that you’re actually working with.

Let’s identify where there’s a human involved and fix that piece.

Let’s see the result, and then we’ll go to the next piece.

Show me your flowchart.

Yeah.

Will, what are they not buying?

I don’t really know if there’s one area I would say they aren’t buying.

It feels to me like there’s a lot of push to transform the bank.

I think they’re looking at smoothing everything.

When I talk to banks on a regular cadence, probably at least one a day, if not more, I’m seeing them have these middle- and back-office initiatives, and I’m seeing them have these front-user or account-holder-facing experiences.

I’m feeling like they’re learning to bifurcate those strategic initiatives and work through them.

I see people asking questions around that 360-degree view of the bank, and I think they’re trying to make all areas of their digital brand better.

I don’t really know that I could point to one thing they are no longer focused on.

The big idea I’m starting to see is that they’re beginning to marry account opening with doing digital lending inside the app, making sure they have a way to do surveys of their account holders and do Net Promoter Scores so they can actually get their bonus.

I’m seeing them ask for this myriad of services to be brought together in a very smooth and elegant way.

It feels like that’s trumping what they’re not buying.

It feels like they’re not buying in silos as much, and they’re trying to buy the experience more.

That’s my feeling.

Yeah. It could also be a reflection of what you all offer too, right?

Whether it’s data, Karen, or the fact that Q2 is predominantly a digital company.

It’s not like you’re sitting there having deep conversations with them about branch lockboxes or anything heavily physical.

You guys are heavily digital, so you might not be running across those things.

Pretty good problem.

But, Sam, we are hearing from these folks about the new popcorn machines and coffee machines for lobbies.

They want those automated as well.

I’m kidding, of course.

I’m like, that’s a new technology for me. I’ve got to get one of those.

I thought he was serious.

We hear a lot about, do we want an all-in-one solution or do we want best-in-class?

One is they want to stitch together and put their unique stamp on a couple of different solution providers externally.

The other is they either want to build it themselves or get somebody who can do everything all-in-one.

The buying decisions go quite differently depending on whether they’re doing one or the other.

I don’t know if you’re seeing that, Will.

Sorry. I know you just went on mute.

That’s okay. I’m muting things back and forth.

I really do.

One of the things we’re starting to see is that people want to build their own innovation pods and do some of this building on their own.

I think what they’re expecting is to work in a manner like they would with Salesforce or Microsoft AppDynamics, where they can participate in something where a lot of the complexity has been removed.

At Q2, we’ve had a way to extend our platform for a long time, but now we’ve minted this concept of an innovation studio.

We now have our customers working on this, and we have our partners, third-party system integrators, starting to do the innovation for financial institutions.

One of the big things I see around who’s buying, who’s building and who’s making the decision is speed.

Speed kills.

That’s a quote from back when I used to play football, which was a hundred years ago, and I also wasn’t very good at it because I was not fast.

But speed kills.

What we’re really seeing from the vast majority of financial institutions is they want to be able to move.

They want to move at their own pace, and they’re willing to work with a broader ecosystem than ever before.

We’re trying to focus on how we can enable that innovation to come from the financial institutions themselves and work with third parties and Q2.

It’s an opening up and an acknowledgment that there are talented people everywhere.

Despite what I said before about data talent being centered in certain areas, there are talented people everywhere in financial services.

They want to move when they want to move, and we’re trying to make that an opportunity for them.

I was going to jump in with a question for you, Will, on who I should start on my fantasy football league this week, because I’m getting my ass kicked by my wife, three daughters and son-in-law.

But now that you said you weren’t any good at it, screw it. I’m going in a different direction.

I want to get everybody’s perspective on something.

When the pandemic hit this year, a couple months after the real bottom of it, the press was talking about how digital transformation was accelerating.

I still argue with that a bit.

I think what we really saw was an increase in digital adoption, not necessarily digital transformation.

I want to take this up beyond who’s buying what and what’s working or not working.

Where do you see your clients in terms of digital transformation of their institutions, and how are you fitting into those plans?

Karen, you want to go first on that one?

Yeah.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle.

I’m hearing from heads of innovation who actually have budgets, so that is an argument under the transformation column.

But the solutions we’re adopting, we’re not touching the credit model.

That’s the biggest misconception, that you can get 80% faster decisioning and servicing and keep everything the same.

That’s just adoption.

When we’re presenting debt-service coverage, people call it AI, and all it is is calculations.

In the theme of what Will is saying, we’re not quarterbacking transformation. We’re quarterbacking adoption.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard a quarterback say he’s not very good at football, but okay.

Really, the reason I’m saying we’re somewhere in the middle is that if we earn the right to quarterback adoption, then we can audition for the transformation job.

I think the transformation job is going to open in 2021 or 2022 when they see that you can trust an outside provider to really get results.

It’s not just an external expense. This is something tied to revenues.

If we audition properly, then we can help collaboratively move the ecosystem forward.

Will, want to jump in on that?

You just have to click off that mute button.

There you go.

Violent disagreement on that one.

No, I’m kidding.

I agree.

I do think transformation is accelerating.

I really believe financial institutions are opening up their pocketbooks.

They see this is a requirement.

There are a lot of touchless purchases happening now. There are QR codes being used for menus.

These are real things, and all age groups are using them.

I think what banks are beginning to sense is that it’s time to smooth out the experience and maybe force all these back-end system providers to actually work with the people who can build and modify this experience layer.

They realize it is their brand.

The experience is the brand now.

There’s no arguing with that.

It’s not the walnut. It’s not the giant building. It’s not the real-estate location or position.

The brand is the experience they can provide on a small phone, essentially.

Their employees want to work with modern technology too.

I think it’s accelerating. I absolutely think it’s permanent.

The questions people are asking now feel like what we always imagined they would be.

I think we’re really at a great place.

Hey, Sam, you do a lot of strategic-planning work with our clients.

Where is digital transformation on the agenda?

What are the barriers they see? How are they defining it, and how fast are they really moving toward something?

I think Karen nailed it earlier when she said, “Let’s get specific.”

That’s one of the things that’s really changed.

There was a better-than-decent chance they had “digital transformation,” literally those words, on some document somewhere that meant very little or was incremental.

Then all of a sudden, there’s no way for you to talk to people.

I agree with Will that experience has been focused on for quite some time, but mainly in the transactional and servicing elements of running a bank.

How a customer finds you, shops you, decides on you, buys from you and originates with you, those front parts of the process have been a mess.

They’ve been a mess for years.

They’re still a mess.

As you pointed out, Ron, digital account opening, people are on revision two, three or four. They might have four or five different ones in there at revision four.

The main thing is they’re trying to get very specific.

How do we measure this? How do we know when we’re there? How do we know if we failed so we can stop and try something else?

I have to say, though, I’m really sold, Will, on that real-time integrated coffee maker and popcorn machine.

That’s something I’ve got to get my hands on.

To me, that’s really digital transformation.

If you can get the popcorn and coffee figured out, I think you’re there.

But will there be foam?

That’s what I want to know. Is it the coffee that has crema on top versus just standard gas-station coffee?

But yeah, I think that’s what I’m seeing, Ron.

I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, but I think it’s much more specific now because it’s more urgent.

Yeah.

And I think when you hear Sam say that, the specificity is critical.

What people are doing, however, when they talk about the specific change in the experience, is they are threading that to the next action people need to take.

You can onboard, but after you onboard, you have to engage.

That means you need to make sure you get your debit card, move your direct deposit over and set up bill pay.

Then those same people need to be able to get a credit product from you.

What they’re no longer saying is, “Help me get someone into digital banking.”

They’re now saying, “Get them in. Now engage with them.”

They’re saying, “Don’t just advertise to someone so they know they could open an account with me. Help them go from learning about me to adding the account to living in digital banking to getting a loan to activating their debit card.”

They’re asking those journey questions.

The journeys are starting to come.

While they’re talking about the specific, there’s always someone in the room who wants to make it about the journey, because banking is a journey.

That is the definition of banking.

You use different parts depending on where you are in your journey.

I would say the consumer has experienced a huge uplift on experience in their journey, but the business, no.

The business still lives like it’s 1995.

There’s no tie from when money is coming in to when the business has to make payments.

Everything is an individualized experience. Everything takes time.

If you’re doing anything outside the norm, let’s say sending an international wire, you’re in the branch even during COVID.

It doesn’t make any sense.

I think that’s probably the next bucket that needs to be addressed because SMBs are the backbone of the economy.

We have to be able to serve them.

Their top-three need is lending.

As Will said earlier, that’s not going to be the money maker for the bank, especially not with interest rates where they are now.

But if you want the right to serve that customer, you need to solve their lending needs.

Then you need to give them a great journey when it comes to cash management, transactions and payments.

Stop having them become the expert in your products and meet the customer where they are.

Just give them what they need when they need it.

I say this as someone selling to a bank, someone who used to work at a bank and someone who’s now a business customer myself.

I don’t want to sound like I’m disagreeing here, but I always tend to do that.

Here’s the thing that comes to mind.

Whether it’s a small business or a consumer, I don’t think even as a consumer myself, I ever think of what I’m doing as a journey.

That doesn’t even sound like a good thing to do.

I just want it to be done.

Whatever I want, I want it done. I want it done fast, and damn it, I want it done right.

I’m thankful that my wife handles a lot of our banking needs and has the patience to deal with these people, because it’s just not right.

I don’t think customers, whether consumers or small businesses, think of this as a journey.

That keeps coming to mind as a challenge banks have to get over as they keep talking about this thing as journeys.

No, I mean, thank you for grounding me.

I’m sorry. That’s an internal term that we use around here.

But, Ron, I agree with you.

Maybe I should qualify that just a tiny bit.

When we think about the journey, the reason we like to talk in journeys is because people come and bring their own context with them.

If you imagine context as the suitcases for the journey, people approach their bank and $100 means very different things to different people showing up at a bank.

When we talk about journeys, it’s making sure the right services are available for the right person at the right time, where they are, with the context they bring.

Maybe journey is the wrong word, but I think it’s productive.

Will, it’s productive.

The customer journey is like an ’80s band, right?

Don’t stop believing.

What I love about it is at least you’re starting on the outside.

For years, when you talked to bankers or even in many cases fintech partners, they were talking about process inside the bank.

Start with compliance. Work your way forward.

Compliance had the power.

Move forward to the lending department, maybe docs first and then lending, and then maybe at some point you actually talk about how the application affects the consumer.

At least the processes people are looking at now are starting with consumers and businesses.

That’s a step in the right direction.

It’s so true, Sam.

I’m stuck on this point ever since we started talking with payment processors.

Why are we not tying when money is coming in for a business to when they have to make expenses?

A lot of those expenses are regular.

Why don’t they just show up on the screen right away?

Here’s a wonderful journey, or a “get me back to my life, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I’m a business.

Money comes into your account internally without the business even being aware of it.

The expense could pop up and you hit a button.

Why are those two separate experiences for the business instead of being one experience on the back end?

I’m sure Will and I could get together and figure that out very quickly.

Why isn’t it that way?

Why isn’t that a priority for financial institutions right now?

Because I’ll tell you, it is certainly a priority for the Visas and Amexes of the world.

Yeah.

Actually, I had a question come in that kind of ties this together.

We were talking about data and also reaching out to the consumer and consumer journey.

The question was about whether we’ve gotten to a point where, when it comes to the data, whether it’s data helping them budget or something has changed, like an address, can customers change their own information?

Can we turn data management and data science into an element where consumers can make some of their own changes and correct errors without necessarily having the banker do that work?

Maybe that’s very tactical, but I thought it was a good question.

Any thoughts on that?

Yeah. Consumers and businesses can change their own data.

If they move locations, they can make those changes.

If they want to change a mailing address or phone number, they can do that.

Those are just high-risk activities today because that’s how a lot of alerts are pushed out and where a lot of statements are done.

It’s really important that there’s risk and fraud monitoring when key personal information is changed.

Then the next question becomes, can you actually go and update that on the core in real time?

That’s just a matter of the adapters.

So yes, people are already allowing for that.

And, Karen, it sounds like I need to go on some sales calls with you because we do all the things you say you can’t do for the commercial bank.

But I’m not going to get into any of that right now.

I didn’t say we shouldn’t do it.

I’m saying they don’t buy it.

Going back to the question of whether they buy it, they’re all aware it’s possible.

This technology has been possible for years.

That’s not where they’re spending their dollars.

Right.

One thing I wanted to ask about is we talked earlier about what’s working and not working or selling, and what they’re buying and not buying.

Will, I know you guys have worked with a lot of different banks and credit unions, but also startup fintechs and interesting startup brands.

What do you see working or not working in partnerships?

Everybody talks about partners.

Most of the time when we use the term partner, it’s not really a partner.

In true situations where it is a partnership and you’re working with a third party or other fintech companies, what’s working there and what’s not?

There are a lot of really interesting relationships out there.

What is working in those partnerships, or what’s working for those fintechs, is going and attacking a very specific use case.

This goes back to the point you were making earlier.

They find something they can do really, really well, and they go do it.

I also think the amazing thing that happens in those partnerships is when the financial institution says, “You can’t do it that way.”

What we sense from the fintechs we work with is a lot of, “Why not? Yes, we can.”

We can do graduated AML and graduated KYC.

If someone wants to put $10 in an account, we’ll let them put $10 in that account.

If they want to put $200,000 in an account, we’re going to start paying attention and actually have them go through a more rigorous process around identity management and verification.

What I’m starting to see works well is the pushback you get from fintechs around how they can push the envelope.

That’s one.

The other part that’s working well is the infrastructure a bank provides and the compliance they allow these fintechs to benefit from.

I do think fintechs are respecting that.

There’s now more mutual respect than there ever has been in the past.

As much as the fintech is talking about disrupting the bank and saying banks are terrible and bad, I think they realize there’s a specific role banks can play in helping them launch this niche service they want to offer.

I think they find that partnership comforting.

Karen, anything you would agree with or any other observations on what’s going on in partnerships and what’s working or not?

That last sentence was everything.

You want to go launch a product in a bank, that’s going to be a very expensive endeavor.

For a fintech, you can do it very quickly and test it before investing millions.

What’s working well is when companies, whether they’re a bank, fintech or something else, realize the opportunity is in the platform play.

The ultimate example of the platform play is Amazon.

They once sold their own product, and it was books.

I don’t think anyone thinks of Amazon as a books company anymore.

What they’re selling is the opportunity for selling.

That is the superhighway right now, and it’s not a surprise they’re going into lending.

There’s a divide in financial institutions between those that are holding on to their financial products of the day and making sure they’re as competitive as possible, and the ones opening up their systems to work with the best-in-class fintech and offer new products others can’t.

Fast-forward five years from now.

Who will be in a better position to compete in the market, which is very busy?

There are a lot of fintechs, banks and tech companies entering.

Who’s going to be in a better position?

I would argue it’s the companies that consider the platform as the ideal.

By opening it up, you’re going to get to the best offerings.

The customer actually has the seat at the table.

They’re deciding.

There was a question earlier on how you protect the customer and their data.

Of course, they’re giving permission. They should be giving permission.

The idea that you could create an ecosystem that challenges all of us to bring our best every day, that’s how we’ll win.

That’s how we compete, by collaborating.

We’ve only got a couple more minutes, and I know people are going to be bailing out just before the top of the hour.

I want to get in with our last topic and get everybody’s opinions on a very specific question: predictions for 2021.

I’ll abstain since I’ve already published my predictions for 2021, and I hope people will check it out at the Fintech Snark Tank on Forbes.

There’s my little pitch for the day.

Predictions for 2021.

Will?

I actually think you’re going to continue to see this focus on the commercial side of the bank.

I think you’re also going to continue to see a focus on digitization and automation of lending, and people are going to want to be able to make faster decisions there.

I think data is going to continue to rise in importance.

The question is how insights are actually going to be shared across the organization.

I really think one of the huge emerging trends is going to be this concept of an enterprise coach that actually coaches change throughout the organization.

Those are a couple of things I personally believe are going to happen in 2021.

Great.

Karen, your predictions for 2021.

Jumping onto that bandwagon, I would say we’re going to use data.

We’re going to use insights, and we’re going to use them to meet customers where they are.

We’re going to stop asking them to be experts in financial services, and we’re going to meet them wherever they are.

We’re not going to tell them what accounting software to use or what payment platform.

We’re just going to accept whatever it is they want and then hit them up with the product that is most useful for them.

It’ll allow us to move as an industry from reacting to what they’re doing to being proactive.

The other trend I see is that we’re not just going to focus on customer experience.

We’re really going to put an underline under employee experience.

That’s going to become increasingly important.

Excellent.

Sam, what are your predictions for the coming year?

I think mergers and acquisitions are going to pick back up and be hotter.

There’s been a little bit of easing here during the year for all the obvious reasons.

There has been some activity, obviously, but I just think there’s going to be more.

I think it’s predominantly to redirect physical spend into digital spend.

One way to do that without a lot of controversy and a lot of internal organizational heartburn is through a merger.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you just put it all in the middle of an acquisition expense.

That’d be my prediction.

Excellent.

Well, listen, Will, Karen and Sam, on behalf of Cornerstone, Sam and I want to thank you guys for taking the time this afternoon to join us on Fintech Hustle.

For everybody on the line, thank you for joining us.

To the person who submitted question number two that didn’t get addressed, Sam and I will check that out and get back to you.

Hope to see you back here when we have the next episode of Fintech Hustle.

Thanks a lot, folks.