Your Key to Future Proofing Your Business: Data in Action

All right.

Hey, everybody. We've got a fun panel here.

I'm sure we're gonna say this more than once,

as people are gonna filter back in for us.

But this panel is called: Your Key

to Future Proofing Your Business: Data in action, implying

that data inaction would also be the key

to not future proofing your business.

We've got three great panelists joining me here today.

We've got Kirk Benson of US Bank, Chris Griffin of Narmi,

and Penny Lee of the Financial Technology Association.

I'll turn it over to each of you just

to do a quick introduction on yourselves.

Chris, I'll start with you since you're on the end.

Sure. Yeah. Chris Griffin. Hello everyone.

I'm one of the founders at a company called Narmi.

We do white label digital banking

and are fortunate enough to partner

with MX. In a prior life,

used to be a CIO at a small credit union

and then worked at a larger

global bank for a bit as well.

Kirk Benson, nice to be with everybody.

I am part of our digital data

and AI team, head of a customer success team,

which does all of the, for reusable tech, does all

of the things a normal customer success team

does, but not for profit.

So want to distribute all

of our apply work, doc management,

money movement stuff across our 50 plus

businesses, most that are over a billion dollars in revenue.

Hi everyone, thanks for coming today.

My name is Penny Lee, president, CEO

of the Financial Technology Association.

We are trade association based in Washington, DC

representing large FinTech companies ranging,

I like to say a lot of the one syllables:

So Plaid, Stripe, MX, Brex, Ramp Chime.

But working on both shaping U.S. policies

for the modernization of payments and FinTech.

Excellent. So three very different

viewpoints on the industry.

Again, the topic is gonna be really talking about

how we're using data in the industry,

how can we be using it better?

And I think a lot of us are coming from the session just

before this, listening to a lot

of different ages of consumers.

And so, I'd like to start the question,

with a very open-ended question, which is really just,

as customer expectations are changing,

obviously the nature of our roles, the nature of the way

that we engage with data is changing as well.

And I'd like to just kind of go down the line

and hear from each of you how things have changed over the

last five years, how you sort of expect them to continue

to change over the next five years.

And I'm gonna go reverse order

this time. So Penny, I'll start with you.

Thanks, Greg. You know it was a fascinating,

I think, session, to hear how people are

not only using financial products,

but how, what their expectation is.

And so it was so fascinating to see the various generations

and how they interact.

I know from my own personal experience moving from

checks into digital payments,

recently somebody asked me, a contractor asked me

for a payment and I said,

can I provide an electronic payment?

Well, if you use a card,

that's three and a half percent.

And I said, what about ACH? Oh, you want a ACH by check?

I said, no, just ACH,

if you can provide me an electronic link.

And they're like, oh, better yet, if you could provide me

with a PDF of your voided check,

then we can get your account

and routing number, then we can then put you

through our system to then send you a check.

I was like, yeah.

So my expectations are greatly changed, in

that I want instantaneous, I want to be able to

with the PDP, with Venmo, with Cash app, with

so many of these other services, bank transfers

and others to be able to move my money faster, cheaper,

easier, without the friction to be able to do it seamless,

to be able to pay bills instantaneously,

to have it settled quickly.

And so my expectations as far

as payments in particular have really changed.

Yeah. And before we move on to you, Kirk,

I just wanna say this is a, I had a very similar experience

that led to me carrying around $20,000 in cash.

I felt like a criminal, but also kind of like a baller.

I was like, wow, who, who does this?

You could go to Vegas. Yeah, no, I didn't.

I thought it was the most terrifying 10 minutes

of my life while I was carrying that amount of money.

Kirk, over to

You. I'm happy

to carry around your

$20,000 if you need any help.

I think touching on a few things there, in terms

of like, Hey, what's changed in five years?

What's gonna change? I think there was more data

inexperiences now than five years ago,

and there'll be way more five years from now.

I think in terms of expectations is,

banking clients expect us to use their data

for their good, right?

So if you compare it to Uber, you know, I live around here,

but, I open up my Uber app,

it's got the five destinations

I tend to Uber to around here. I got three clicks.

Open it up, click the address, click go,

choose your thing to that.

And from a US bank perspective, we want

to focus on using that data to anticipate needs at,

you know, the classic digital moments that matter.

So if you pay off a loan, right,

then you got disposable income, we can serve up

and tailor the right credit card rewards

or high yield CD or savings to that.

But clients expect us to use data.

I'm curious, has anyone used chat GBT

or Gemini for financial advice?

One, two. So, the extreme minority, right?

I still don't know if I fully believe the survey data,

but according to Experian, who I do trust, right?

They claim that 64% of Gen Zers are using

LLMs for financial advice today.

And I think that's just a great, you know, great, if

that is true, which I will take them at face value,

even if it's not, you know, even if they're off

by a magnitude, like a pretty crazy shift in how banking

and financial advice is being

served over the last five years.

You know, that didn't exist five years ago,

barely three years ago.

So to me that has to be the kind

of the fulcrum of what's changed.

Yeah, absolutely. And I realized

I never actually introduced myself.

My name is Greg Palmer, I'm with Finovate.

We just ran our showcase in New York last week,

and this is a topic that we saw over and over again.

You know, obviously the amount of data that's floating

around makes so much possible.

It's really fun for me to get to see some

of these startup companies, really young companies

who are using a lot of creativity when it comes to how

they can take the data that's available

and turn it into really excellent customer experiences.

And this is an area that I think

the best is still to come for sure.

There's so much that there is to do.

But, anytime there's an unpleasant experience that exists in,

you know, there're kind of a lot of 'em,

there's a possibility to do something better,

and we can really make this a very targeted

growth opportunity for companies in the space.

So next question is really one

of the really critical things

and Kirk, you mentioned this, using data

to make customers' lives better, there's an element

of trust when you're talking about data.

There has to be not only data in terms of safeguarding it

and keeping it from falling into the wrong hands,

but also, you know, using it for good, right?

Using it to advance the benefit

of the customer.

So I'd like to talk about this intersection

between trust and data.

And Chris, I'll start

with you from your standpoint,

this is something I would imagine you probably have

to think about quite a bit.

How are you exploring that intersection right now?

Sure, I mean, I think as you say,

it's just like trust and data equals banking, right?

Like, there isn't fractional reserve

banking without those two things.

Even if you go back to writing the physical ledger

and believing that they're putting that

information down correctly.

And so in today's age, it, you know, for me it's really

around how do you set your consumers

and businesses up for success?

And that's frequently allowing them to use the tools

that they want to use for banking, right?

So, from our financial institutions,

anytime we talk about business banking, it's always about,

do you connect to NetSuite?

Do you connect to Zero?

Do you connect to, the ERP

or accounting system that matters to my business?

And I find it really interesting that there isn't kind

of the same conversation around consumers, right?

And some of that is because folks like Plaid

and MX have solved some of that problem.

But I think there's a big opportunity there, especially

with more gen AI tools coming into the spotlight.

And inevitably the security

and compliance shortcomings that they have

is gonna be a really tricky balance

to meet their expectations.

You know, majority of Gen Zers are using

it for financial advice.

Do we feel comfortable as a banker

or credit union offering financial advice from

LLMs in our digital banking platform?

I hope not. I hope not. Right?

So it's a really interesting

point in time right now, to navigate.

Yeah, absolutely. Kirk, this is a great one.

I think obviously working at a financial institution,

you have to balance a lot of moving pieces,

and customer trust.

I know we were talking about it before we got up here.

Massive concern for you all

as well. What are you guys seeing?

Yeah, obviously, as a bank trust,

I think about it in two different ways.

And so from a banking perspective,

raise your hand if you have had a data breach, right?

Or as part of your company, it doesn't feel great, right?

So can't do that.

Within banking, what we're focused on is transparency

and control, right?

So

we've got a whole section in our digital experience about

where we are sharing data with who,

and you can toggle it on and off, right?

So we build trust that way.

And then

I think the other perspective is there's like a

intuitive experience design.

So partnering with MX, right?

So I can now see my American

Express transactions, right?

On my online banking dashboard.

And I think the way that's designed

and popped up, it's gotta be intuitive.

And so you gotta trust the bank that they're doing it

for good, for you, right?

And not using that data obviously

to upsell at the right periods of time,

but there's a design component to

how you use data and trust as well.

Yeah. And just from the FinTech perspective,

you're only as good

as your last experience

and the last experience for the consumer

because there's so many choices out there now.

And to ensure that the stickiness that there

continues. To have that user experience

that embodies trust, that says that information

that is there on my dashboard is true,

that it's going to stay there.

That I have insights into it.

And I think one of the things, being kind of last,

not last leader, but moving into spaces,

seeing the landscape, what

is missing from my bank statements of the past?

How do we improve upon it?

Or what is the transparency

of my retirement account need to be?

And so I think the visibility is one of the things that has,

kind of helped to bring

that trust factor into some

of the more innovative financial tools.

But yet it is incumbent to ensure there's the protection

to make sure that you're stewards of this information.

There's nothing more sacred than somebody's money.

And so when you are a steward of it,

you have to ensure the trust.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I think there's another way

of thinking about trust, which is something which came up

quite a bit at Finnovate last week, which is,

can you demonstrate not only

that you're gonna safeguard my information,

but can you demonstrate to me that you're on my side

that in these critical moments where I find myself

as a customer with substantial needs

or needing some help in that moment, are you with me

or are you against me?

And I think this is one of these really critical questions,

which is gonna have to be answered by the industry

as a whole, because it's not difficult to imagine

how you can use the data that's available

to find opportunities to get incremental revenue.

And I think this is one

of the things we're gonna talk about a little bit more later

on, but there's more to be set up for

if you can demonstrate to me that you are

with me when I need you, then this is

how you go build a really long lasting relationship,

which can stand the test of time.

And one of our customers, who won best

of show last week called Case App,

had a really compelling demo talking about these critical

moments where you,

a customer is pursuing a fraudulent charge, looking for

some sort of resolution on the part

of their financial service provider.

In those moments, if you

as a financial institution don't meet

that customer's needs, they're gonna walk.

And there's a lot of data that backs that up.

So this is, I think as we talk about trust, we'll kind

of come back to this and think about it from a couple

of different standpoints.

It sounded like you had something

you wanted to chime in with really quickly

As well. Yeah, I mean,



it's about you.

We have very educated consumers too,

and they are looking to shop products

and they're looking for sometimes the best,

not only information, but what the,

best opportunity, you know, I have a primary bank

that's a traditional institution, and you look

and you see your savings is at 0.0001 maybe right now.

And so I'm gonna shop to see,

is there another place that I can park some funds

that I can have a higher savings?

And so you kind of shop around and you try to see,

and to make sure you test.

I mean, I tested out, and Kirk

and I were talking earlier,

people don't just bank in one place anymore.

They spread it out. They are,

comparison shopping, but to give each,

but they only work if you can instill that trust that

my money's gonna be safe while it's there

and it's actually producing the 4% interest kind

of savings on it as well.

So trust is paramount.

Yeah, I was actually at this event two years ago

where I was talking to a banker's interest rates were

rising, who was saying we're not able to offer the same kind

of rates that some of our online competitors are

because they can move more quickly.

And he said, I hope

that our customers would have the loyalty to kinda stay

with us, even though we can't offer them that rate.

My question to him was, how loyal are you to your customers

who are one day late on a loan payment

or who are in the process of defaulting?

Like, are you extending the generosity

that you would like to see returned to you in this moment?

No response by the way, I'm not gonna,

name who that was,

but, it was a resounding no comment.

I do want to,

we have to switch gears a little bit.

We need to talk about stablecoins

because this is an area where

cryptocurrency is obviously something which has

captured a lot of people's attention.

Obviously there's a lot of ups and downs.

Stablecoin is looking to kind of take a lot of the risk out

of it, and there's a lot of cool

stuff that you can do with it.

And again, this is obviously a heavily database play.

Kirk, I'd like to get your thoughts, first of all on

how you're looking at it at US Bank

and whether this is something that you can,

can see yourselves engaging

with at some point in the not too distant future.

Absolutely. You know, a couple different things.

So I think it's definitely a focus area today.

So, our CEO Gunjan talks about,

think about the rail and the end points to it, right?

So my in-laws send me a picture of a check on my iPhone,

and then I gotta take another iPhone

and deposit that through another phone, right?

That's their end points, right in between, they don't care

how that processes.

And so if you think about stablecoin, it's

that middle processing part.

So the use cases we're looking at are cross-border payments

for an exchange, and then we've got some European businesses

kind of as an example, so intra to that.

And so then my personal opinion is like,

each bank will end up with its stablecoin, right?

So it can control all the policies, procedures, rails,

and so then you can tailor the experiences at the end points

with a rail that's got some advantages for processing,

just like other rails, other advantages for processing.

Yeah. I feel like I'm

moving the mic away from my face somehow here, so hopefully,

I don't know, can we dial it up just a little bit?

There we go. Chris, we'll come to you

Now. Sure.

You know, I,

historically I will admit I have been,

and probably forever will be a bit of a crypto bear.

If I lived in Venezuela,

if I lived in North Korea,

I would be very pro cryptocurrency.

But, to me it kind of, you know, the underpinnings

of what crypto is, decentralization, a public ledger,

those things sound unnecessary

and also kind of scary in a well-functioning society.

You know, do I really want my payments

to one day be decloaked?

I would prefer not, right?

I don't think I have anything to hide,

but at the same time,

who knows where the world goes?

So I think there's definitely,

as you mentioned, cross-border payments, like

what I'm really excited about stablecoins is,

I think it's making people scared

and making them move their traditional products

to be more competitive

and to think through, alright,

how the hell do we get things moving faster

from a payment perspective?

Because it's not instant, we're behind.

Every other developed country has gotten there,

we're starting to inch towards it.

So yeah, I guess those are

my kind of freeform thoughts on it.

And Penny, you probably have a different

perspective here just because you see

so many different types of companies

who are part of the organization.

What are you seeing who's using it well?

Who do you think you… anybody wanna highlight here?

Well, I love all the children. Just kidding. Of

Course, they're all your

Children.

you know, everybody, as far as the members

that I represent, are all trying to figure out

what their stablecoin strategy is.

And it takes very different forms,

I think in its first initial, kind of exploration.

Most are viewing it as a cross-border payment using it,

thinking of it more as a rail than a digitized,

tokenized piece of money.

And so you'll hear a lot of them are working through

what they would term programmable money.

Is there some stability that this rail will now offer us

that we can transfer

or make a cross border payment into another country

or vice versa into the United States.

And there's a stabilization of rates of speed, of cost,

and also looking at it from their own not wanting

to go through pay

various different tolls along the road to be able

to make that remittance or that cross border.

So I think the first iteration that most

of our member companies in, whether that be PayPal, Stripe,

Remitly, Wise,

others are looking at more from a cross border payment rail

and the opportunity, as you know,

fintechs don't have access into Fed services.

So anytime that there is a cheaper rail

that is out there, they're gonna try

to explore it as best they can.

So that's the use case.

I still think that there is an open question,

to Chris's point as to how the US consumer will use it,

I think right now, if we, if you've ever tried to,

if you were in the NFT stages, if you ever tried

to buy an NFT, it was really clunky.

And I would still say there is incredible amount

of friction for a US consumer to buy a product

using a stable coin.

So that still has to be built out.

That still is the unknown use case

or exactly how it will work.

But there's a lot of buzz, there's a lot of excitement,

there's a lot of trying to figure out

what exactly the stablecoin strategy

of your individual company is.

And we'll start to see kind of

what this movement looks like,

but in particular I would say in the first case is,

is, cross border.

Yeah. And certainly I think the easiest one

to immediately see the benefit.

Chris, I think to your point, you know,

the idea, again, it comes back to trust.

I like the idea

of having transactions on a blockchain auditable.

I don't like the idea of potentially

that blockchain becoming visible or getting de cloaked

and all of a sudden somebody has access

to my entire financial history.

And so this is a really difficult balancing act,

and I think it would be naive to say

that anything is gonna stay private forever.

You know, we've seen enough

rebuttals to that as a concept.

So a lot to think about there.

Now we get to the spicy one, now we get

to talk about Open Banking.

Obviously this is really an important topic

for all sides of the industry.

I'm not 100% positive how much consumers themselves

are really aware of the debate that's going on

or how we're thinking about it.

But at, at its core, this question of who owns this data,

and how can we make sure that we're using it again

where we started to advance customers interests.

Kirk I'll come to you again first on this one.

What are your thoughts?

What can you tell us about

what US Bank is thinking about at this point?

I'll use one of our corporate words right now,

so interconnectivity, let me make it real.

But in terms of Open Banking, we want to,

build those experiences that draw on

internal external data.

I think to the other element

that we have is, we've got a developer portal,

so developer.usbank.com,

that we can basically do embedded finance either

through like basically API money movement, APIs

or data signals, risk signals,

et cetera, et cetera, to that.

And then I talked about it comes back to trust, right?

It's that control and transparency is

that third pillar already talked about,

but you need to make it available.

You need to have a foundation to manage it,

and you need to have people that are practitioners

to build it and integrate it into experiences.

So there's a lot more there given our 50 business lines,

but those are the three pillars.

But I think it comes back to that trust part as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

I can feel Penny wanting to talk,

but Chris, I wanna give you a chance

too. Okay, sure. Yeah,

I think Penny definitely is at the

epicenter of this, so excited to hear her take.

But, as a digital banking provider,

we actually do play a pretty big part in Open Banking

where we're also furnishing the data

through FDX on behalf of our financial institutions

and also being screen scraped by certain

participants that don't use OAuth yet.

And then also leveraging that data

to enhance the client experience.

As you mentioned, everyone wants

to see their aggregated financial picture

and no bank is really serving the needs

of every individual consumer and business, right?

There's going to be something outside of that.

But yeah, from from my side,

I think the biggest thing that I'm hoping for,

and I think remains one of the biggest questions is

what is gonna happen to the long tail

of financial institutions, right?

Chase has already exercised their might

and their power to get revenue out of this.

What is going to happen to the

$25 million credit union?

Are they going to receive the same benefit

or are they only going to kind of receive the

potential downsides to Open Banking?

So that's something I hope

gets brought back into the limelight.

I feel like we're right now in almost kind

of like a reverse Dodd-Frank debit card era

where the big banks have all the pull

and the small banks, the credit unions are

probably not in a position

to negotiate there.

And that's certainly my experience, at least

what I was hearing last week is a lot of people on that,

do feel like they're along for the ride to some extent.

So Penny, from your standpoint, I mean,

obviously there's some news that just dropped.

I'd love to hear what you are thinking about

what you're working on with other folks

in part of the association.

Yeah,

I would say six months ago if I had said Section 1033 Open

Banking, probably every eye would've glazed over.

But it's obviously been front and center

and kind of where the perspective

that we have always taken is how do we get the US forward?

How do we think through, we are one of,

we export incredible amount of innovation and ingenuity

and forethought and products

and services all over the world.

And yet United States feels like it's

behind on so many different areas,

as far as instant transfers and settlements

and payment ability and tap to pay

and all of these other act innovative products

that are out there that a lot of the rest of the world,

and I would say underlying most of

that activity is data portability.

And so we have always taken the position,

and I think from the FinTech perspective

where it says in this section

that the consumers have the right to permission their data,

that the data belongs to the consumer.

And that's found foundationally where we start from.

And so from there it is, how is it safeguarded?

How is it protected? How is it transferred?

What are the enhancements to it?

What is it that they can receive?

And so that's kind of, you know, all of

that is underlying on that, you know, all the products

and services are that ability to obtain the,

what we say, the consumers to be able

to permission their data to be able to get the

personalization of the products,

8 outta 10 Americans right now,

to use a FinTech on a daily basis, to be able

to have access

and have it in a way that is, not having

governs over it or prohibitive fees

or exorbitant fees being attached to it

that doesn't allow either small institutions to be able to

add FinTech services to their products

or for the FinTech to be able to be, you know,

prohibitive from being able to,

increase their fraud detections, being able to detect,

to your earlier point,

your mortgage is coming to an end.

Have you thought about putting your extra savings

into a, a higher yield

or have you thought about this type of retirement?

So all of that is, available

and we just need to think bigger.

I think from a US standpoint when you see

certain bank trades, say that well,

all this is all I should be required to do is send a PDF

of your bank monthly statement to you electronically,

that's all Dodd-Frank,

that's all section 1033 requires me to do.

And my point is, we can be so much better than that

and we should be better than that,

and we should be aspirational in how we treat

a customer

or a consumer here in the United States to allow them

to have a better financial experience

than anywhere else in the world.

So that you can live

that better financial life and have better insights into it.

So yes, we are, we were the,

and still are, the defender, the sole defender of the rule,

in a court in Kentucky, once the CFPB pulled out

of it, because again, we believe similar to

when you get your health report

or you know, you get a lab result back from your doctor,

you can transport that and get two

or three different opinions from various different doctors

without it costing you an exorbitant fee that you can't,

or put a toll on it, on what you can do.

We believe the consumer data should be able

to be permissioned and permissioned

without prohibitive fees.

I think certainly based on

what I've seen from other areas, other parts of the world,

this is absolutely the path towards

better customer experiences.

And so if you look at it through that lens

of what's gonna be best for the end users,

I think it's pretty clear that being able

to move data quickly

and get to where customers want it

to go is absolutely gonna be a really critical factor there.

I do kind of see the other side of the coin too.

I talk to a lot of people from all sides

of the industry, but certainly for the kind

of next generation of FinTech companies that's coming up,

the curve access to this kind of data is absolutely vital

for them to be able to deliver new types of experiences

and solutions that right now

the industry isn't able to deliver.

When it goes to examples,

such a buy now, pay later, individual loans underwritten

after each purchase,

and having the ability,

and there's, there's problems right now

with reporting into the bureau

and not having the modernization of the algorithms

to be able to determine whether

or not that's a real line transaction,

a realtime transaction or where they are.

But within Open Banking

or the ability for consumers to share their data,

you're seeing right now

that they can underwrite at a higher quality at a higher

level, less than 2% default fees at less than 2%,

delinquency fees.

They are using this information again to be able

to properly underline, underwrite what

that consumer's capability is to use a B-N-P-L.

And so that kind of innovation that is there is something

that we should only encourage more of instead of less,

instead of trying to throttle back

and do the bare minimum, we should be leaning into

how do we, again, make sure the consumer's not harmed,

the consumer has advantages, they have the knowledge

and we can all work together for an in into an ecosystem

that permissioned data can be enhancing.

Yeah, we do have to kind of wrap up.

We're gonna get to some questions from you all in just a

minute for me.

I heard this analogy and I wanted to share it.

When you see your bank do something like try

and charge you for your data, it's like the equivalent

of seeing an actor that you really like,

pop up in a royal match commercial

or an ad where you're like, how is that person

shilling this stupid iPhone game?

It's not gonna make you stop watching that person in movies,

but it does just kind of chip away at your idea of

what you thought of that person.

And so how many times can you appear in a really bad

commercial before people stop watching your films?

I don't know. How many licks does it take to get

to the end of a Tootsie Roll pop?

I don't know, but you will eventually get there.

So with that said let's go ahead

and just one final takeaway from each of you

before we get to some questions from the group.

Chris, I'll start with you again.

Yeah I think ultimately it's trying

to figure out where your consumers and businesses are

and how do you make it really seamless for them to do

business with you because, as you kind

of pointed out a couple times, I think

ultimately it goes back to trust and goodwill

and that loyalty piece is,

if you're holding someone hostage that's not gonna

to give them that, that same feeling.

You know, there's so many ways of doing that.

Open banking is certainly one avenue.

We've worked with a bank called Grasshopper Bank

where they wanted to enable integrations with chat gpt

and Anthropic, Claude

and others, not within their own digital banking space,

but recognizing that many of their businesses

and consumers want to be interacting with

that financial data in their tools of choice.

Those are the types of use cases that

I think will garner a lot of goodwill.

And frankly, they have seen that very much firsthand

where they're getting a lot of people reaching out,

opening up accounts

because of that connectivity, which is

really remarkable to see.

It's gonna be a minority of folks,

but those are some real use cases out there in terms

of enabling those experiences.

That's awesome. Kirk, final thoughts from you

When Penny spurred this thought?

It's so from a data perspective,

I think we're digital nerds.

We think about like the DIY,

but the, human being in banking is critical to

that trust factor and data can help that experience.

I think you can argue

as things don't stay the same using data in the agentic

experience of whatever LLMs and AI become.

And so just you need to know where that trust lies

and how you're using data, whether it's, you know,

we call it digital and human,

that integrated experience the DIY

experience, et cetera to it.

Cool. Penny, bring us home.

I would just say, as we were saying earlier,

the future's bright, we gotta wear sunglasses.

But it's an exciting time

to be in the financial services space.

There is an incredible amount of innovation.

Some will prevail

and some will obviously be in the test,

but there's an incredible amount.

And I think making sure that our rules

and regulations within the United States are enhancing

instead of prohibitive.

We ran into this a lot last,

during the last administration where

their first instinct was, oh, you're online,

you're serving an unbanked community, potentially,

or an underserved community.

You must be predatory or at risk

'cause you're big tech.

Instead of saying, oh,

what was the market gap you were trying to fill?

Is there something that we can do to enhance

that while protecting safety, soundness fairness,

and all of those other aspects?

How do we take us rules and regulations

and make it so that you can actually grow and,

and be an additive service versus, oh my gosh,

I don't understand you, so let me shut you down first.

So I think just having a reset in our mind

and in kind of our, the potential of where we're at

ensuring safety and sound is obviously in fairness,

but making sure that we don't let those stop the innovation

that is just not only at our doorsteps,

but we're actually incubating most all of it. Yeah,

That's a great place to leave it.

So from here we'll open it up to questions from you all.

I believe there's a roving mic, so,

if there's something that you wanted to ask,

just raise your hand and the mic will find its way

to you slowly but surely.

Here we go.

What single piece of advice would you give

to a brand new chief digital officer at the

community banking institution?

Ooh, I like that one. Who wants to take that one?

I, you know, from the session this morning with

Sol, is that how you pronounce her first name?

I believe right, Sol?

So thank you Saul. She pointed out that

90% of AI initiatives are gonna fail.

Um, and I think that's actually, like, that sounds scary,

that sounds bad, but I actually view that as kind

of a positive thing where it's like the cost

of experimenting with these tools is so cheap

and so much easier, right?

Like we used to develop a predictive model

around risk that was really costly to retrain

gen AI is actually pretty decent at catching a lot of

common fraud and risk that you wouldn't expect.

So yeah, I think just like trying to

leverage more tools kind

of off the shelf would be my advice.

And experimenting and seeing what has traction and

moving forward with that.

There's a lot of great vendors in the space in terms

of being able to help enable that,

Just to bring that to life, right?

So it's like know your customer, right?

And, tailor those experiences towards that.

So we've got branches and customers in Chicago.

We've got branches and customers in Alco, Nevada, right?

250 miles that way, middle of nowhere.

You've gotta know those customers.

And so we'll tailor those experiences to

the different customer set, what the needs are.

You've got a segment and bucket in some form

of the productized set, but I'd say know your customer.

Yeah, I'll just piggyback on that one as well.

And I will preface this

by saying I've never worked at a bank,

but I have seen a lot of banks try stuff.

And one of the things that I can say

for sure is a great best practice is to start

by really looking at what you're not doing well right now.

And there's a lot of data that you can find that'll tell you

where are customers abandoning processes, what types

of customers are we attracting?

What types of customers are we missing?

And getting a sense of what you have to do in this kind

of really granular way is a very good first step.

So you have meetings with people, you have a good sense of

what it is you're looking for them to do.

I've seen a lot of bank

and FinTech partnerships that get started on the wrong foot

and never yield to anything productive.

'cause at the end they kind of get to this point

where they think, what are we doing again?

What's our goal here?

If you come into those conversations with a really clear,

here's what I'm trying to accomplish,

you can really supercharge

how quickly you can get something done

and make sure that the results are what you want them to be.

But again, I've never worked at a bank,

so take it with a grain of salt.

Any other questions that we have from the room?

Well, while they're transitioning one of

my favorite thing to do both when I used

to work at a credit union

and now is to go into the call center

and not with the mindset of like,

what can I make more efficient,

but more of, if they're getting a call about this,

someone doesn't want to call a bank anymore, right?

You know it's probably a good kind of iceberg

indicator, where

there's probably the bulk of your membership, the bulk

of your customer base who is running into this problem

and not spending the time to actually contact you about it

unless it's truly something

that they absolutely need to contact you about.

So those kind of like peripheral problems are really fun

to explore and understand, you know,

this makes a ton of sense.

We should prioritize this as a solution.

Some of them are really obvious, some

of them are quite subtle.

I'll say as a customer myself, if I'm calling,

I am already pretty upset.

Like, I have exhausted all other avenues

to potentially solve that problem.

Representive. That's right. I'm on the phone, just operator,

operator. Well we may be able to end early.

I don't know any other questions in the room

for any of our folks up here?

Looks like no,

that means we just must have answered everybody's questions

ahead of time, so thoroughly.

Well, I want to thank each of you

for joining us for this conversation.

Thank you all for being here

and hope you have a terrific rest of the day. Thank

you.