AOBA 2026 Takeaways: AI, Deposits, Data, and What’s Breaking

Well, hello out there. This is Sam Kilmer, managing director of Cornerstone Advisors, bringing you an all-new episode of the Fintech Hustle podcast.

I’m here off campus in a mysterious location not to be named, in the warm sunshine.

Sorry about those of you out there who might have a foot of snow in your front driveways, like my wife.

Hi, honey.

We are here off campus at AOBA 26.

Another great year starting off at another great conference, and I’m joined by some real rock stars.

My colleague way down here on that side, the other Bank Director rock star, Al Dominick, is joining as my guest co-host with the most today.

Yep.

As you’re taking prisoners, I feel like this is a proof-of-life video.

So we’re all having some fun out here.

We are.

Al and I have brought forth, we come to you with fun guests from the Venn diagram of smart, fun and get-stuff-done in fintech.

Without any further ado, let me introduce our guests.

To Al’s left, we have Christina Miller, who is a vice president for Alchemy, and I think it would also be safe to say you were the chief operating officer of Mantl?

Yes.

Prior to that.

I’m already making organizational changes on this video as we speak.

No.

And comes to us with a lot of experience also at Affirm.

Yeah.

Affirm.

So right from the trenches of fintech.

Christina Miller, thank you for joining us.

Hostage one.

Was that hostage one?

Hostage two.

Hostage three is coming up.

Hostage three coming up.

We have Alita DiMaria, who is an executive vice president and, I think, recently promoted chief operating officer?

That’s correct.

Of PeoplesBank in Massachusetts.

Yes.

Excellent.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for getting me out of the snow.

That’s right.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, it’s not just Indy, it’s Boston.

Everybody’s getting it right now except Phoenix.

So thanks for joining us.

Also, Mac Thompson, who is the CEO and founder of White Clay.

And I think also, Mac, if I recall, way back when, weren’t you at BofA and Chase?

Oh yeah, for about 15 years.

So we’ve got former banker, current banker doing some challenger-bank stuff, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, doing some new stuff that you guys are doing.

We’ve got someone who’s been at Affirm, as well as Mantl and now Alchemy.

Then this guy, I just get to hang out with Sam.

Yeah.

We just hang out.

Did you hear how high his voice went when he got excited?

I want to see that enthusiasm throughout this thing.

Let’s go.

It’s just coffee.

The espresso bar down there, I think, has the espresso.

Thank you for that, by the way.

That always kills at many conferences.

So let’s just jump right in, guys.

AOBA, we’re like, what, it feels like we’ve been here for three days, but it’s only day two, right?

Day two.

I’ll just start off with, just to get to know you first, and then we’ll get into it.

Tell us a little bit about a day in the life of you.

Why don’t we start with you, Mac.

What’s a day in the life of Mac at White Clay look like?

Well, that’s both the same place, by the way.

The next year for me is a ton of meetings, meeting all kinds of people and talking constantly.

I’m losing my voice already.

Really?

Just wait another half an hour.

You can do that.

I was just in the hallway walking here and ran into Erin Simpson from Encore Bank, and she was telling me how her data warehouse is completely constructed around the stuff that you guys have.

It’s like that.

It’s nuts.

Yeah.

We are very customer, well, we believe in relationship banking.

So everything we do is about building awesome relationships with your customers.

From data to intelligence, pricing, deepening, retention, it’s everything.

It’s what we believe in.

That’s what we do.

Commercial lending, a lot of commercial lending, right?

We do everything.

It’s full spectrum.

So we go retail, small business, business banking, commercial, wealth, everything.

So it’s the entire bank organized, transparent, and you can see everything.

Really, it is, what do you want to do as a bank?

We help make it a day-to-day reality at a banker level with the clients and throughout the management team.

Very cool.

I know that you wear a lot of hats, and I say that as a person who really likes hats.

Not as nice as yours.

So tell us about a day in the life, Alita.

Yeah.

So PeoplesBank, largest community bank headquartered in Western Massachusetts.

We’ve done a couple acquisitions recently.

Last year, we merged holding companies with Cornerstone Bank.

Not to be confused.

No, it confused me.

I thought Cornerstone was being bought by PeoplesBank.

I got a text.

We’ll work with you now.

Too funny.

Then most recently, Athol Savings Bank was acquired by Cornerstone Bank.

So we’ve got that going on.

Currently working on the conversion of Athol Savings Bank into Cornerstone Bank, and then just the day-to-day operations, IT, project management, and the fun, what I call the fun stuff, the digital and the banking-as-a-service stuff.

So our digital brand portfolio and our banking-as-a-service partnerships.

You and Mac, maybe, I know at least the two of you guys had sessions here today, didn’t you?

Yeah.

So you were leading a session with Jeffrey?

Jeffrey.

Yeah, Jeffrey Kendall.

So Nymbus.

We did.

Jeffrey and I did.

We’ve been on a little bit of a road show since our core conversion.

We converted from our legacy core last June to Nymbus’ more modern cloud-based core.

So we’ve been on a little bit of a road show the last seven months.

Fine.

Good stuff.

What about you, Christina?

Listen, I’ve got to say, if I recall correctly, Alchemy-Mantl was the GonzoBanker Fintech Deal of the Year.

You were in the middle of that deal, right?

You’re Mantl.

Could we bring her the Christmas ham that we were saying?

I almost had, oh, keto.

What?

What had Stacy Bryant been trying to give us?

That almost poisoned us.

Yeah.

Well, we’ll get you a quart of that and make sure it’s okay.

We have better wine for you coming up.

We didn’t bring a ham, but we did bring a Fintech Hustle double-album coaster set.

I’m sure you’re going to like that better than the ham anyway.

So tell us about a day in the life of what you’re doing and what you’re seeing and thinking about as you’re walking the halls of AOBA.

Yeah.

I’m VP of channel and partner for Alchemy.

So I spend a lot of my time with our go-to-market team thinking about, are we telling the story of our digital sales and service platform, our loan origination system, in a way that’s really resonating with our customers and their pain points?

That doesn’t stop in the sales process, of course.

So also working with our implementation team and our support team to make sure that we’re kind of showing up consistently.

But the cool thing is all of those conversations almost invariably include our product team.

We just try to keep that flywheel really tight between our sales, our delivery and product, so that things on our roadmap are the things that are not just cool, but things that our customers really want and that drive outcomes for them.

That’s my favorite part.

Very cool.

Anything popping out at you here at the AOBA conference?

By the way, I’ve sold that for you because it’s a prize.

We’ll make sure that you get it back.

All right.

Anything that you’re seeing or hearing in the hall here today, over the last day and a half, that pops out at you?

Yeah.

I think we’re hearing the usual themes.

AI, AI everywhere, fraud, stablecoin.

They’re all very important things.

Those are the recurring themes.

But one thing that has kind of popped out to me from this conference is customer retention.

Hearing about deposit outflows, $2 trillion flowing from banks and credit unions into fintechs, protecting existing deposits and growing from your customer base has really become mission-critical.

You need technology that takes you beyond the acquisition point.

That’s a milestone.

That’s not the end of the journey.

The flip of that, I think the challenge there, is vendor consolidation.

That’s the other thing I’ve heard a lot about, just consolidating your tech stack so that you can serve your customer through that lifecycle and have personalized insights, real-time decisioning, all in one platform, so that you can utilize that data to serve your customer with a seamless experience and relevant offerings that allow you to compete with fintech.

What about you?

Anything popping out at you?

Obviously your session, but...

Yes.

Same thing.

AI.

Having conversations about stablecoin.

Not like we’re doing it tomorrow, but obviously banks need to be aware of what’s going on around them and where the industry is going.

A lot of educational things about our team that’s here.

A lot of getting educated, making sure we know what’s going on.

But obviously AI for fraud.

We have to fight AI with AI because that’s what we’re seeing right now.

We’re seeing fraud perpetrated at banks where AI is at the center.

That’s a huge thing for us right now.

Keeps me up at night.

Interesting.

But there’s a whole super-positivity about the overall financial performance of banks.

Yesterday morning, the whole main session was really kind of super-positive energy, lots of good news.

No one’s really talking about the credit cycle, which is big because credit cycles happen.

But the only thing we’re not, is the community bank industry piece of this.

Our customers are all getting old.

The community bank customers are getting really old compared to the world demographics.

So we have a demographic shift that we’re not handling very well.

There’s 24% of the population that are millennials, and community banks, their percentage of customers, I don’t know, from this McKinsey study.

The other thing is our balances are doing fine, but the number of customers we’re getting isn’t great.

Who’s McKinsey?

McKinsey.

Oh.

I think you’re fine.

They were probably bringing the West Wing and Banking Peer asked earlier.

No shame.

Throwing a phone number or something.

It’s all good stuff.

Speaking of inside AOBA, here’s the consummate insider of AOBA past, present and future.

What are you seeing from the main stage there, Al?

I think you all have hit on some of the themes that, yes, in the past have been here and I think in the future they’ll remain.

How do I stay relevant to my existing customership?

How do I create a bit of a competitive advantage around some of the nontraditional players that are coming in and taking bites on the margin?

How do I stay disciplined in my execution?

The name Acquire or Be Acquired obviously lends itself to, are you going to grow or are you willing to exit?

I had said yesterday it’s like a grow narrative.

That becomes a little too simple, but I think it’s a good framework for a lot of the institutions that tech companies are trying to support because they have no ability to ask their customers to wait for them to change.

Customers aren’t looking for more features.

They’re looking for problems to be solved.

The faster that tech companies are able to step in and say, we have a discrete issue that we know we can help you accelerate and move beyond, that’s where you’re going to start to see traction.

I love hearing from the executive teams that are here that technology is fundamental to their long-term success.

It’s not like it was a few years ago where it was a cost to be managed or one of those expenses that the CFO is going to complain about.

Now it’s a real strategic element to the entire plan.

So knowing you’re making the right investments and you’re working with the right partners is, I think, the key.

So technology as a revenue center as opposed to technology as a cost center.

Well, one of the CEOs this morning said, “We can grow, but why are we doing this? Is it making us better?”

So it’s not just acquisition.

It’s the relationships that we have.

Are we maximizing the potential that we have?

Alita is talking about Nymbus.

That’s a big leap of faith on the bank’s part to make a shift.

You were on COCC, you’re transitioning over to Nymbus.

Two great companies doing some really wonderful work.

COCC has been getting a lot of recognition in the marketplace for what they’re doing for their customers.

But I think people are saying, “Hey, we need to position ourselves for what’s next and we want to be early into the game.”

I have to be able to trust that Jeffrey Kendall and his team can execute on or ahead of the schedule that we’ve had because you can’t say we’re going to do something and then miss that date.

You totally compromise your integrity and the trust that you build with the customers if you can’t perform like they expected you to.

It seems like almost so many of the banks in the midmarket now are figuring out that they need to be able to build something and not simply take something off the rack and plug it in.

Do you know what I mean?

Well, look at all the people that are being attracted into the banking sector.

It’s not that banking is boring.

Now you have all these different applications where there’s massive amounts of data which is still relatively unstructured compared to what people need.

But you see this as an industry that you could have a great career in because the technology has advanced and now the business appetite is starting to catch up.

Any reactions to that, guys?

Jump in.

Or don’t jump in.

You know, this data thing I think is huge because, as bankers, we’re all told, use your data, use your data, data, data, mine your data and everything.

Most banks, including us, and this is a focus for 2026, you’ve got to have a data management strategy.

You have to understand where is your data coming from?

How are you handling it?

How are you managing it?

So we’re drinking from the fire hose, being told use the data, use the data, but it’s kind of just like, okay, how?

Those are some of the things that we’ve got to focus on too.

The data for me just kind of...

Both of you guys have big data things that you’re doing.

Christina, any reactions to that?

Yeah.

I think that kind of plays into the vendor-consolidation piece.

There was this push, at first it was all of the, you know, you have a core 20, 30 years ago, you have a core that includes everything.

Then people started finding point solutions, kind of best-in-class point solutions, and that created the spiderweb of disparate systems that don’t talk to each other.

So even ingesting that is a headache, much less cleaning it and activating it.

I think that piece is where kind of a unified platform really comes into play so that you can actually activate that data and use it to deliver personalized experiences to your customers.

I feel like those are the FIs that are...

Our largest, most complicated, has 154 different systems that all get integrated.

It shows a complete picture of the client across all those.

Oh, it’s great.

I’m sure you actually think about it and it makes you throw up.

Yeah.

But the real key to this, at least in my mind, is what are you going to do with this?

It’s zeros and ones and people, right?

We get really good at pushing zeros and ones around.

We’re just a lot better at that.

We kind of lost track of people because, like you said before, people have problems and needs.

No one wakes up in the morning and goes, “What are we going to do with my bank today?”

Right.

That’s not...

But we interact with our clients every single day.

Hey, Al and I actually do.

I think we...

I didn’t tell anyone.

That is what I think.

We’ll move on.

So sad.

And these are all wonderful things we’re creating, but you make it a human experience because when they have problems, it’s emotional.

Well, your point though, you are talking about how fragmented the market is when it comes to the tech opportunities that a bank would have.

Then if you layer that on top of the teams and the expectation for them to perform in a certain way, if they don’t know what their goals are, if they don’t know how you win as a business, then that’s where all this leakage starts to come front and center.

I think some of the best leaders are the ones that can say, we’re going to be really ruthless in our focus.

We are going to be disciplined again in how we execute.

This is how we win in our niche, in our market.

This is how we serve people, and we’re going to make sure that technology is properly allocated against it.

We can think about our capital, we can think about our talent, we can think about our tech stack, but it’s all focused in on how we can perform on a day-to-day basis.

I think that’s where, again, the maturity of some of these banks is really, would be surprising to people who are on the outside looking in who think it’s just, banking is boring, take deposits, make loans.

Because that is fundamental, but it’s not how businesses really operate.

I think that’s a great point about the banker experience too.

We talk a lot about the customer experience, but it’s also the person behind the desk.

Shout-out to Dupaco Credit Union.

They took their in-branch account opening from seven screens in three different systems down to one platform.

Think of that experience.

If you’re trying to serve a customer and you’re behind a screen versus one platform, you can spend the time actually getting to know the customer and deepening that relationship.

I think that’s sort of the future of relationship banking.

Isn’t that what, like, you go to Finovate and other places, you see companies that are trying to reduce the number of times a human interacts with an application or a document?

I’m going to flip it over to you.

What do you see from a trend standpoint that helps people become that efficient organization?

One of the main things is, if you look at just the efficiency ratio, everybody tends to focus on, well, how are we doing on costs?

But in fact, the efficiency ratio is more driven by how much revenue are you bringing into the pipe relative to that cost.

What kind of jazzes me about the data solutions that you guys are working on and that you’re evangelizing is that the data is not just about reducing fraud.

Totally get it.

That’s very important.

Generally speaking, if you’re not good at managing data to manage fraud, your regulators will be breathing down your neck anyway.

So we all have to do it.

Using data to reduce costs, every CFO is going to dig into that a little bit.

But where I think banks and credit unions have historically really struggled was using data to drive revenue.

That’s really where it falls apart.

Sometimes it’s because, candidly, their revenue functions are decentralized.

Oftentimes, whereas I think many banks have moved to having more of a chief banking officer, where you’re bringing that together.

So the leaders have been doing that.

But still, you go into a lot of banks now and they’re like, well, payments is over here and commercial lending’s over here and mortgage is, I don’t know who the hell these guys are.

The point is, it’s all fragmented.

The more that there’s focused talent and leadership at the top driving how we’re going to use this data to drive growth, that seems like the real future.

Huge point too because you can save your way to profitability for a short period of time, but at some point you’re just commoditizing yourself.

In the past, when you go to conferences like this, people talk about banking being like a dumb pipe and how this is a commoditized business in waiting.

It doesn’t have to be.

That’s again back to the old data concept.

You know your customer better than so many.

If you can be that proverbial canary in the coal mine, you have opportunities to say, I can adjust and address some opportunities before others sense that there’s something there.

I think that’s where the tech component is an accelerator for all this.

Now Sam, I know this is your show, not mine, but I do love being at Acquire or Be Acquired and I love the premise of Fintech Hustle when it got started.

It was supposed to be, we’re in the hallways, we hear some random things.

I’m always curious, you’ve come away with some of the best one-liners and also some of the best swag that you’ve seen.

Is there anything that is just a little unexpected if you aren’t out here?

Because there are over 2,000 people that are registered.

There’s probably another thousand that are not sneaking in.

There are a lot of folks who are here.

But the ones who aren’t here, what has kind of stood out to you?

Yeah.

Well, in addition to, you’re right, I am being very mindful of walking by all the booths and checking out all their swag.

I am picking up a decidedly boozy pattern.

You and Kim Snyder over at KlariVis are duking it out for how much whiskey can we give in exchange for reading brochures or whatever.

Literally, your brochure, Mac, was right next to a box of Old Forester.

I like Old Forester.

Thank you.

Is that your own?

That’s their own blend.

I mean, come on.

That has my attention.

Maybe that’s troubling that it does.

Anything else that jumps out?

I just hear from the stage lots of focus on all this.

Of course AI, to your point.

AI, crypto, we get it.

We hear it.

But I would say what I find uplifting to me isn’t just, well, our performance is better, capital’s great.

What I think is great about it is, at the same time that we’re running into all this, having bots do things, I’m also hearing the guys from Huntington and United and all that up there talking about talent and humanity and being vulnerable and building up their teams.

I’m glad I’m hearing that because if all I worry about all day long is a bunch of bots, they would blow me out of this industry.

I’ve got to be honest with you.

What about you guys?

Anything else that you see in the industry, whether it’s here at AOBA or anywhere else, that’s really jazzing you right now?

Something that really makes you excited about the future of the business?

Anything that puts you on the spot?

I mean, other than the Old Forester special, that’s...

I think community banks are starting to figure out you’ve got to take care of your deposits.

When we switched March, May of 2023, deposits together and all this.

I think people started realizing we do more than just make loans.

That beauty of the banking space, you’ve got to take care of the customer.

That whole relationship thing.

If you went in a time machine back to 2022, we weren’t talking about deposits.

Nobody was talking about deposits or relationships or customers.

It was about tech and growing loans.

Now it’s about banking and taking care of people.

I think that’s awesome.

You’ve grown a lot of deposits in a short period of time, haven’t you?

Yeah.

One of the things I’m kind of picking up on something everybody has said already, and just kind of for me in banking, one of the things that I’m hearing is community banks and what the demographics are aging.

Got to do this, we’ve got to do that.

One of the things where I think banks get themselves into trouble is they try to be all things to all people.

It’s one of the reasons why we launched our digital brand because we saw that aging demographic and we’re like, we’re PeoplesBank.

We can’t try to be all the things that this demographic wants and this niche wants and this niche wants.

So that’s what got us on that journey to create those portfolio of digital brands.

We started with ZYNLO.

Then that’s also one of the reasons why we got into the BaaS partnerships, to help the other niches, the fintechs that are growing and building, offer those services when we might not be able to or it’s just kind of not our idea.

They have a really good idea, so we’re going to sponsor them.

That’s one of the things, when we’ve all talked about community banking, data, all of the things that are thrown at us, 154 different pieces of information.

That’s what popped into mind for me as everybody was talking.

It’s definitely occurring.

But what I’m jazzed about is Woodford.

I just, that really...

How do you spell that now?

Anything jazzing you?

Yeah.

I think the themes around digital transformation being table stakes now.

This isn’t something for the risk-takers, the first movers.

This is something for those that want to survive and indeed thrive in this environment.

One way I see that, and this struck me watching the AI session actually, is that our money is smart now.

Our money for the longest time just kind of sat there.

Now with AI-driven insights, automation, real-time decisioning, it allows you to see around corners as a consumer.

For FIs, they can offer better, faster, smarter, safer products to their consumers.

Money has gone from passive to proactive.

That feels like a huge upgrade.

Yeah.

I was thinking about Mark DeFazio did a session today with our colleague Brad Smith.

One of the things he said is, “I never really thought that I would ever be a banker that hired a data scientist.”

But here I am.

I’m hiring teams of these people.

He’s really leaning into it.

I think the real takeaway is, we may have grown up thinking being a commercial lender is the lifeblood of the bank.

There’s still extremely important, but there’s this whole building up a deposit machine and an e-commerce machine at scale.

It’s just a different set of skills that we’re not used to thinking of as revenue people.

But revenue data officers are revenue people.

Well, you think so.

Mark runs a bank.

I think it’s Metropolitan Commercial up in New York City.

He’s a serial entrepreneur at heart.

He’s a New Yorker.

He took that bank, started up, and your point is a great one.

This is where I’m reminded that we don’t get a prize for reinventing the wheel.

Nobody’s coming with a trophy to say, “Hey, nice job. You solved a problem that somebody else already has.”

So my big thing here is there are so many people that care about a strong, healthy regional and community bank space.

It’s not just the BofAs, JPMorgan, Wells, that are getting the attention.

We have to understand where they’re making investments, why they’re making investments, who they’re hiring, why they’re hiring.

The thought that everyone’s here to compete, but at the same time to say we need a strong system.

The exchange of ideas is, for me, the coolest thing to be a part of because we all have different strengths.

We all bring different experiences to the table.

The idea that we’re a little bit more mature enough so we know how to talk with each other, as opposed to say, well, I don’t really understand a fintech partnership.

That’s not true anymore.

Now it’s, what’s the outcome that I’m driving toward and how can you slot in in a way that is realistic for us and responsible for you from a business standpoint?

Yeah.

One thing I think that all three of you have in common is that whether you’re inside a bank, you’re a founder of a tech firm, or you come from a fintech background, you’re all entrepreneurial.

Even though we may not think of ourselves always as, I’m definitely a startup.

But you started up a digital bank, right?

We’ve done all this ground.

One thing I love about entrepreneurs is they’re always thinking about, what’s a gap?

What’s broken?

What’s something, a pain, that somebody needs fixed?

I’m curious, I’m a consultant, I get to go negative.

We’ve talked about what jazzes you.

Is there anything that you still see out there in the industry that you’re like, I wish that worked better?

Somebody really needs to kick the tires on that, be an entrepreneur.

Anything jump out at you guys as something that needs fixed out there in the business that some spirited person in the hall out here today should tackle?

I worked at giant banks, and one of the things that just freaks me out is all these little banks are trying on their own to build things that JPMorgan Chase is working on.

Please stop doing that.

I mean, there are 5,000 people working on LLMs, right?

When I was at BofA, we had more people in mobile banking than probably most of the banks here had total.

That was 20 years ago.

So there’s got to be a way that we can get community banks focusing on what they’re doing great, which is taking care of their customers, and somehow get all this backend commodity on a common platform.

Because they don’t need to be worrying about all this stuff.

You can’t scale it, right?

Know what you’re good at.

Do that.

Find the people who can fill in your weaknesses and then trust them.

Do the vetting and really pay attention to the credibility of the teams because Sam makes a great point.

We can automate things left and right.

If you don’t have the right folks with the right experience that understand how your compliance, your risk stands up, what regulators are going to be coming to you asking you about, then you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

That’s table stakes.

Any thoughts of things that you think need...

Yeah, I can piggyback off what Mac said.

I think one real opportunity that I don’t think we capitalize on is the bank branch.

We still see a bank branch as, oh, a place where you might go and shake hands and keep up relationships.

But in truth, more accounts are opened in the branch than they are online.

That’s still the main channel and a huge growth lever for banks that I don’t think they’re leveraging.

That tech stack in the branch should be the same one as digital channels so that you can meet your customer wherever they are.

You start to open up an account in the branch and you’ve got to pick your kids up from soccer practice?

No problem.

Here’s a link.

Finish on your phone.

It should be a seamless experience for the customer no matter which channel you’re on.

But I think that channel has been largely ignored.

So modernizing your tech stack so you can modernize your branch footprint.

You don’t necessarily need more branches, but you can make your branches more efficient with your tech systems and allow your RMs to actually listen to your customers, spend time talking to them and serving them, meeting them where they are.

Yep.

Sorry, I’m trying to completely...

Well, I mean, suit and tie, so I’ve got to keep things on point.

I’m also a little boy.

So I wanted to get this the same because he invited me on.

He’s giving out little gifts to everyone else.

I never get a chance.

You want to take a look at this nice bottle?

Again, since we’re roaming the mean streets of Arizona, we have plastic cups.

Nothing fancy.

It’s a table wine.

It’s a red one from Sonoma.

Well, thank you, Al.

In exchange for that, I have for you this lovely Fintech Hustle bucket hat.

I think...

I thought that one was going to be...

I might not put it on so he can wear it.

Because I think it matches the suit perfectly.

It doesn’t say Gilligan at all.

Alita, anything that you think you see out there that could use an entrepreneurial kick or something out there?

Well, I wasn’t thinking entrepreneurial kick, but I was thinking of something that worries me.

As we’re a community bank in Massachusetts, and as all of the tech and all the industry grows, talent.

Finding the talent that wants to come work for, you know, little, well, not that little, but little PeoplesBank in my mind.

Trying to find talent remotely, competing in the environments where we need good people.

Because we’re innovating and we’re doing, in my opinion, pretty cool things.

Finding people to come on board with us and want to be on that journey and want to work for PeoplesBank in Western Massachusetts over this city.

To apply to PeoplesBank.

Actually, you said donate, right?

Right.

Right.

Well, I think other bankers might agree with me that are trying to do things and getting into the innovative spaces where we need the knowledge.

Yeah.

I remember when we first tried to bring on our first data scientist, we couldn’t find one.

So it’s just kind of one of those things that as a leader in a bank, and we’re going to be involved, we need some brainpower.

Where do we find it and who wants to come work for us?

Yeah.

That’s great.

Lest I sit here and knock all the bots, one thing that jumped out at me in one of the sessions earlier, Derik Sutton from Autobooks just said, “Hey, here’s an interesting thought experiment to go innovate.”

He goes, “Go look at your web page for checking accounts, business or consumer or whatever. Put it inside ChatGPT. Throw it at ChatGPT, and then take two competitive products of competitors that you respect and throw them in, and then ask ChatGPT which one would you choose and why?”

I thought, okay, now that sounds like a pretty cool use of technology without it becoming personal or losing humanity at it.

Speaking of which, I suspect you’re all jealous that Al’s holding a Fintech Hustle bucket hat.

You have one.

So of course, you need one of these.

These are high fashion.

I’m still waiting for the endorsement deal back from...

Cups.

What’s that?

Oh yes, cups to give away.

And openers for the wine bottle.

So it’s going to be a fake toast to each other.

Have this.

Watch this.

Okay.

It was nice being here with you, but maybe you’ll be back sometime.

So first innovation is use AI to find a corkscrew.

We’re going to work on that.

Well, let me just say this.

Thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

I hope this has been fun.

I just want to say out there, thanks to our guests Christina Miller from Alchemy, Alita DiMaria from PeoplesBank, Mac Thompson here from White Clay, and our co-host with the most, Mr. Al Dominick.

Yep.

We will see all of you out there on the road for another episode of Fintech Hustle, in the hallway with industry leaders having some unscripted chats, taking over a little red light.

Should we toss our hats in the air?

It’s like graduation.

Oh, good idea.

Okay, here we go.

Hey there.

If you really dig this episode of the always-unscripted Fintech Hustle podcast, hit the follow button on Apple, Google, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you jam your podcasts.

And hey, tell your fintech friends.

More shop-talk chats are coming in the hall with industry leaders.

Look to see you out there on the road.