AFT FALL SUMMIT 2026: Why Banks Need To Move Faster

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

I am here in the glorious outdoor hallways of Southern California at the Rancho Bernardo Inn for the AFT Fall Summit, talking shop in the halls, the bars and everywhere else they’ll let us. I think we were at Stone Brewing last night.

We don’t go to bars.

Yeah, that’s right. We’re teetotalers in this industry. I forgot to mention that.

I’m joined by a rock-star cast of characters today from the halls of fintech. Without further ado, let me introduce our crew.

Over here, we have Jill Feiler, CEO of ZSuite Tech, in the digital escrow world of commercial banking. We also have Brian Bodell, CEO of Movemint, which you may or may not have heard of. We’ll probably come to that in a minute because it’s a new brand.

Speaking of new brands, I have Joe Gomez, president of PhoenixWorx, which is a brand-spanking-new name in the banking and fintech industry. We’re going to hear a little more about that.

I’ve got three executives here to talk some shop. Why don’t we dive right in?

Jill, let’s start with you. Tell me a little bit about a day in the life of Jill Feiler at ZSuite.

Thanks, Sam. I appreciate that. I’m assuming you mean when I’m not on a plane.

Yeah.

Or when I am on a plane.

What I love about the CEO role, in particular, is the variety. You go from working with the board—board communications and board presentations—to working with employees and understanding the culture and how to drive it, especially in a remote environment.

We’re fully remote, which takes a lot of energy to make sure we’re cohesive.

One of the things we’re doing right now is managing a lot of product releases, so I’m really in the weeds with our go-to-market strategy. I’m working with a lot of clients, which is my passion—talking with clients day to day, but, more importantly, talking with end users to make sure we’re delivering the right value to our existing clients and the marketplace.

One thing that I think is so critical to being a CEO is driving the strategy, creating a North Star metric for the entire organization and then making sure each department follows that North Star. Everything rolls up to that, with a unified message for the entire company.

When we have product releases or talk about culture, we’re all aligned around that same metric, whether it’s for 2026, 2027, 2028 or 2029. It all rolls up to that.

I think one thing that helps with your empathy—and everything I was hearing there—is that, if I’m not mistaken, you were actually an executive at a community bank. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yes, I was. I grew up in banking. I started as a teller when I was at UW–Madison.

Best thing I could have ever done. That was back when people were cashing checks and stuff. I think I’m giving my age away a little bit.

But I grew up in banking, mostly on the retail side of the house. It was really cool getting into community banking. I had always been with regional banks, and then I went to a $400 million community bank just south of Green Bay, managing the retail side.

Before I left, I was the president for four years. It was an amazing experience.

I think the biggest thing that helped shape my role in fintech was understanding those partnerships from the other side. During the buying process, there was so much disappointment because vendors often didn’t provide what they said they would, or the support fell short.

One thing we really try to do is make sure we do what we say we’re going to do and provide support for our clients to ensure they’re successful, because their success is our success.

Was it Finivation? You were at TruStage. You’ve had a journey through—what was it? Corillian, maybe, or Fiserv? There was a lot in there.

Take us through a day in the life of where you’ve arrived after this journey through fintech.

Sure. Thank you, Sam. Thanks for hosting. I’m still disappointed you didn’t get each of us a cool hat, by the way.

Okay. Here we go.

Nice. Wow.

Thank you. There’s no pressure. You don’t have to wear it now, but I feel better. Thank you.

I did want to comment quickly on the fact that you were at a community bank and became a bank president. That’s wonderful. I’d say our secret sauce now is that we’ve hired a bunch of people from credit unions who really understand what it’s like to work at one and understand the needs of a credit union. That has made a big difference for us. So that’s awesome.

To your point, Sam, I’ve been in fintech for more than 25 years. I was president of a company called qbt Systems, which was acquired by Corillian. Corillian was then acquired by CheckFree, and CheckFree was acquired by Fiserv.

I was at Fiserv with the same team. We left and started Finivation, and then we were acquired by the analytics group inside CUNA Mutual at the time, now TruStage.

We spun out of TruStage in October 2025. I’ve been involved in fintech and the industry going back to the old CUNA Technology Council days, VentureTech and a lot of different initiatives, including when CULedger launched. There are just a lot of wonderful people.

My general day in the life is really about studying fintech, quite frankly. I consider community financial institutions critical to our economy, our country and the people they serve. They’re like friends and family.

In the morning, I get up and read about what’s going on overseas because I think a lot of countries have pretty innovative and advanced movements in fintech.

Obviously, with tokenized deposits, stablecoins and AI, needless to say, there’s just so much to dive into.

I love the people. I love the technology. Our focus at Movemint, as you alluded to, was formerly CUneXus, which TruStage invested in and then acquired. TruStage did a wonderful job because it cares very much about credit unions and put a lot of investment into the platform.

Now we’re owned by a fintech-focused, credit union- and community bank-focused investment group called Demopolis Equity Partners.

The bottom line is that I’ve got gray hair, I’ve been around the block, and I love fintech, the technology, the people and the mission. It doesn’t get old. That’s it.

There are a few consistent themes there. We’ve got lots of experience with mergers and acquisitions, caring organizations, an infusion of private equity and those entrepreneurial, creative juices in the economy.

I love hearing about all of that and the experience from all sides of things. You can empathize in the same way Jill can as a former bank executive.

Joe, last but not least, tell us about a day in the life of your recently ever-changing world. Congratulations on your new gig. Tell us a little bit about your day and the new gig.

Sure. Thank you, Sam, for having me.

It’s a pretty exciting time. PhoenixWorx is our company, and we’re a carve-out from Finastra. It includes the Phoenix and MalauzAI solutions and others. It’s Finastra’s community banking and credit union business.

It’s a really exciting time. My mornings might involve talking to bank and credit union executives. In the middle of the day, we might be talking about product strategy. At the end of the day, you’re working on transformation and integration.

I’ve had a good number of transactions, but this is my first carve-out. That’s where you take a segment of a business and pull it out of a larger organization, which is exactly what we just did.

Yeah, it’s complex, right?

It’s much more difficult. A small company going into a larger one is easy. Going this way is much more difficult.

Most CEOs get to run either a startup or a mature company. I get to do both at the same time. It’s a new name, but these products are well known and provide a lot of value in this market.

It has been a really exciting time for us. I’m grateful for the opportunity to shepherd this business through this stage and into true growth. We’re really excited.

Very exciting. I talked about the lineages of the other two folks here, but we didn’t really talk about yours. You were at Digital Insight and MalauzAI. You’ve been on a journey too.

As I recall, some of that journey was with a mutual friend of ours, Tom Shen, who has been a mentor, as I understand it.

Tom is most definitely a mentor for me. I think we all know Tom pretty well.

Wait. I’m sensing some connective glue here. Tom, did you plan this?

Seriously, mad respect for Tom. I can’t say enough about him.

Actually, I should also say this is not a promotional spot, but he was on the podcast from an AFT summit. I’m trying to remember which one it was, but it was in Vancouver, Canada.

It was a glorious location and a great chat with Tom. I think we need to get monkey gear from Tom, for sure.

When you look at Tom and his experience, what he has taught me, at least, is that it’s all about the customer, the employees and the people. You lean into those things because the business and revenue always come.

Your say-do ratio is really important. Especially in this industry, it’s the same people. We’re all just getting older. Your say-do ratio and your reputation are really important because you might be at a different company and working with a different group, but you’re well known. It’s just like everyone here.

It’s a really exciting time.

Sam, related to that, one thing we’re so excited about is that our board is so powerful, instructive and experienced. Even though I’ve been in the industry a long time, I’m learning every day, whether it’s from our clients, our team or certainly our board.

When you have Tom on your board and people like that, despite the fact that I’ve been around the block, I’m learning from them every day. I’m thankful for their time and guidance because, God knows, I need it.

Absolutely. Having a strong board is incredibly important, especially in an industry that can change on a dime.

Rates are going up, so what does that mean for our business? Having a board that is fluid and dynamic and can help you pivot strategies to meet those needs and meet bankers where they are is critical.

I’d add that, as a carve-out, we were acquired by CORA Group, which is part of Constellation Software, a public Canadian company. It has been really interesting.

There’s less work for me, but they deployed advisers who have done this before. This is what they do, and it has been amazing.

When you talk about learning, I’ve been in this industry for a long time. I’m probably known as an operator, and I’m still learning more every day. It’s like, wow.

It has been such a great experience overall.

Yeah, that’s great. The Tom Shen Mutual Admiration Society—check. That’s not an endorsement, but wow, that was pretty close.

We’re on day two here. We’ve had several sessions. I know many of you have had to go in and out of sessions to take calls and do other things, so it’s not like we’ve attended everything.

But I’d love to get your pulse check. Whether it’s from the sessions, the bars we never go to or the hallways where we’re doing the elbow twisting, are there any key themes from this AFT Summit that have jumped out at you?

There’s no pressure. Anyone can go first. This is not a knock-down, drag-out. There’s plenty of time for everybody.

I could start with one. There’s this misconception that community banks and credit unions cannot innovate as much as regional banks or the big-box banks, as we call them.

I see it differently now for three reasons. First, these community banks and credit unions know their customers better. They’re actually able to innovate faster.

The reason they can innovate faster now is that, five or six years ago, it was fintechs versus banks. That’s no longer the case. Fintechs are empowering banks and credit unions, and those institutions know their customers well.

I’m actually seeing more innovation at community banks and credit unions than at large institutions. That’s one change I’ve seen, and I’ve had a lot of discussions about it here.

I also had a great conversation this morning about the uptick in consolidation in our space.

You can look at that as a challenge and a disruptive activity, but you can also view it from a positive standpoint. As long as you build and maintain strong relationships with your clients, if an acquisition occurs, you’re set up for success because you have a champion at that bank who can make sure your contract lives on because of the value you’re providing.

You can have a smaller client that brings in less ARR, and then it gets acquired. All of a sudden, the opportunity is endless.

It’s about turning that feeling of, “Oh gosh, this is super disruptive for our pipelines,” in the opposite direction and asking how we can dig deeper and build those relationships to ensure we win.

That’s really well said.

I’ll go a little more New York on this. I agree that credit unions and community banks know their members and customers better than anybody, and they have the heart.

I still remember Butch Leonardson saying it’s really about the best product, the best people and the right mission. They all do a wonderful job serving their communities.

One of the sessions I attended yesterday was about how we get financial institutions to move faster.

My concern, and what I’ve also heard here, is that you have SoFi and Chime coming in hard. Nubank has been coming in hard. Then you’ve got Revolut and all this serious competition.

As innovative as community financial institutions are and as quickly as they can move, I don’t think they’re moving fast enough. I don’t know if they’re preparing quickly enough for what’s coming on the agentic side.

That’s my concern. These are my friends and family, so I’m pretty upfront about saying we need to step it up.

Your data is your moat. You know your members and customers better than anybody. You’ve got to jump in. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to market. You’ve got to grow because your competition is crazy and your members’ and customers’ expectations are very high.

I think that’s well put.

What I see as an opportunity, even with my own customers, is focus. You can’t chase all the shiny objects. We actually need to deliver one thing.

Innovation now isn’t just innovation. It’s about value. Good innovation provides value, but I think focus is the key.

Like I said, there are so many partners, and these fintechs are partnering well with banks and credit unions, but there can be a little too much of it.

My recommendation to banks is to focus on what’s most important, deliver it and then move on to the next thing. That’s the opportunity.

Just to add to that, I always comment to so many of our clients and prospects that it’s a hell of a lot easier to be a vendor than a financial institution.

They have to sort through all these fintechs with funky names or changing names—myself included. Then they have to handle all the due diligence, figure out which people get it, get everything integrated and get all the vendors working together.

It is really hard, as you know firsthand from being a banker.

Yeah, absolutely. I’d take that one step further. Once the project is up and running, the relationship doesn’t end because the product can’t sit on a shelf.

The key is the relationship. I keep going back to that. It’s about helping community banks drive success with the products they have because that’s what really drives the value.

Well said.

To tie a couple of those things together, one of the sessions I’ve really appreciated so far was Greg Adelson’s. He played the vulnerable card and came out with guns blazing.

You know what we say: People say they want best practices, and consultants traffic in those words, but what people are really after are the wrecks on the highway that they can avoid. He was very open about that.

One of the things he pointed to was that having strong relationships puts you in a position to have hard conversations.

Brian, to your point, if you’re going into a bank or credit union that has been losing market share hand over fist for several years to Rocket, Square, SoFi or whomever, you need the fortitude to say, “Hey, since we’ve built this great relationship, I’ve got to tell you that, if you haven’t already seen this in your data, we’re seeing it. Here are a few prescriptive things you can do to help improve the situation.”

It’s all good stuff, and I really appreciate it.

I’m curious because you’re entrepreneurs: Is there anything in the business right now that is screaming for an entrepreneur to fix? I don’t know if you’d call it broken, but is there something that’s a bit of an itch that needs to be scratched?

Maybe it’s not something for any of you to solve, but for the next AFT VIP newbie in the hall. Is there anything out there?

I’ve got a list.

Yeah. I think you’ve already touched on it somewhat, but being a banker is really difficult.

We have all these companies. We change names and do all this fun stuff on our side, but it’s difficult for banks to keep all those integrations straight and organized, and then perform customer due diligence, vendor due diligence and everything else.

There has to be an easier way. I say that knowing we’re part of the problem. I’m just not sure how to solve it for them because it’s all driven by regulatory compliance.

That’s my thing. I think it’s broken. I just don’t know what kind of itch needs to be scratched to make it go away. It’s a tough one for them.

Gotcha.

I totally agree with that. I think the complication comes from community banks having such different risk profiles, so they’re constantly asking different questions.

If you could establish a standard and layer in their individual risk profiles, that would be absolutely fantastic.

Another thing I would say—and we haven’t said it yet, so I’m just going to say it—is AI.

What’s that? I haven’t heard of it.

You haven’t heard of it? Okay.

There are a lot of different opinions out there, but I don’t think there’s a lot of guidance. Bankers don’t know what to do. It’s scary, and bankers are inherently conservative.

Guidelines are missing, especially because they’re dealing with financial information, which is so sensitive. I think they’re scared of it.

Yeah. Obviously, the regulators are all trying to figure it out as well.

I do have to take my hat off to the NCUA. When I was chatting with them, they talked about bringing together fintechs, financial institutions and regulators to have discussions and try to figure this out.

Obviously, a lot of financial institutions are looking to the regulators.

There’s a long list of challenges, but one that has always been there and hasn’t been solved is all the KYC, KYB and now KYA—know your agent.

I know there’s a company called Prove and a few other companies that are really trying to figure out how to reduce fraud and member or customer friction around authentication and authorization, especially when you add agents to the mix.

Then you’re watching all the standards coming out of Visa, Google and various groups. There’s a lot of standards-setting that needs to happen.

But to your point, there are several fintechs coming at this from different angles. If somebody can come in and say, “We can reduce your fraud and friction and be very confident about KYC, KYA and KYB,” that’s a big win.

We’ve been talking about this for, what, 30 years?

Yeah, maybe longer.

Yeah, for sure.

AI is interesting because it’s not magic, right? It can’t solve every problem. But we know that financial institutions that take advantage of it are probably going to be more successful than those that don’t.

We need a bunch of guardrails around it. We have a couple of guidelines we follow. Anything AI-integrated has to be explicitly requested and turned on by the customer, so it’s all configurable.

We require written confirmation that they want to use it. That way, we can easily turn it off.

There are great capabilities, but I think we’re just scratching the surface. It’s going to be really interesting to see where all this goes in even the next 12 months.

I agree. It’s going so fast.

I love it. It’s a blast.

Yeah, it is a blast.

So we need standards at the technology layer, but also standards and reality at the banking layer, which accepts no hallucinations.

Yeah.

There’s too much at risk.

One thing I saw here was how using agents in the development cycle of building a new solution can help, whether it’s in those early-stage, first-mile activities or in the actual coding, which I think many of us have seen in our own organizations.

Okay, we get it. It can code. The next question is whether it can start effectively and finish effectively.

It’s like any presentation: The opening and closing have to be good, no matter what’s in the middle.

I thought that was an interesting takeaway from the session Matt Dean had this afternoon. It was a drill-down session that I appreciated.

Another thing for me here at AFT is that I’m normally a little smitten by the keynotes. This time, I’m more smitten by the industry insiders—the Greg Adelsons and Matt Deans.

That was a little bit of a change for me.

Well, okay. I went negative first. I’m a consultant. We do that. Sorry about that.

Let’s go positive. What’s something in the industry right now that has you feeling really good or optimistic about the business? What jazzes you about getting up every day?

As you said, it’s an exciting time of fast movement. Brian, does anything jump out at you that jazzes you about being in the business right now after all the experience we have here collectively?

I’m not saying we’re not young. I’m just saying there’s experience.

Does anything jazz you guys about the business? Go ahead.

Sure. From a strategy perspective, there’s a lot. We’re excited about tokenized deposits. I strongly believe they’re going to be table stakes within three years. Core providers are going to have to support tokenization.

For us, it’s a buy-or-build decision, just like it is for everyone else. We’re really excited about it, and we’re spending time on it.

I’m also personally excited about stablecoins and whatnot. We spend a lot of time on stablecoins, and our customers want them. More than anything else, they want to dip their toes into that area.

But we still need some regulatory clarity, and we’re just not there yet.

Being a geek, I always gravitate toward technology, but I’m not going to do that now.

What I love and get very excited about is meeting with clients and financial institutions and seeing how much they care about their members and customers.

It literally restores my faith in humanity. I’m not kidding.

They’ll say, “We don’t want to say no to our member. We want to make sure they get the loan they need. We’re here to help them.”

Maybe it comes from my experience in the big-bank market in New York, but when I meet with credit unions, they really, really care about their members. Community banks are the same way.

It restores my faith in humanity, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Well said.

I’m going to piggyback on that because I think it’s so important.

What I’m excited about for ZSuite, in particular, is being able to meet with our clients’ customers to really build the value the end user is looking for.

We can sit around the table and think we know what the end user wants. We can sit with bankers and think we know what the end user wants.

But getting end users into the room and building workflows that are really important to them is critical. We’ve just started dipping our toes into that over the past year.

It has been so much fun and so exciting to build that value.

One other thing I was going to mention is that Cornerstone and others are really, really important here.

We’ve always said there’s so much change in this market, but this is a whole other level. Financial institutions need outside guidance, counsel and benchmark data from multiple places to really figure this out.

No pressure, but help them out because they’re our friends and family. They need help. We’re trying, but you guys have a broader perspective.

Well, no pressure and also no pitch.

I would say that, to all your points, people are desperate for sage wisdom wherever they can get it—and no BS.

We can sit here and say we’re independent consultants, and that’s true. But I think the other thing is that people will take great advice and answers wherever they can find them.

Look no further than where people actually get advice. I think it was the SBA that conducted a survey asking people where they get their financial advice, and aunts and uncles outranked banks and credit unions.

That’s not meant as a slam against banks and credit unions. It just means people are looking for advice wherever they can find it, whether it’s good or bad.

If we can all just be helpers, that’s one of my things.

This has been great. I love the fact that we can be outside in this beautiful weather at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, California, where we’re all blessed to spend our days talking shop.

Clouds are illegal here.

What’s that?

Clouds are illegal here.

Clouds are illegal here. It’s gorgeous out here.

With that, Jill Feiler, CEO of ZSuite Tech; Brian Bodell, CEO of Movemint; and Joe Gomez, president of the recently minted PhoenixWorx—thank you for joining us today to talk shop. I really appreciate it.

We’ll see all of you out there in Fintech Hustle land, out on the road at an event somewhere near you.

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 with industry leaders are coming from the hall. I look forward to seeing you out there on the road.