By John San Filippo
Finopotamus was onsite at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas. Co-founder John San Filippo interviewed more than two dozen technology experts on a wide range of topics. Below are highlights from some of those interviews.
“There's a million credit union executives out there that think to themselves, we've done it this way for 30 years. I wouldn't want to change. But if these credit unions don’t change, they're going to die. They're kind of looking over the edge of the cliff.”
Arcady Lapiro, CEO, Agora
“The great thing about cloud delivery is that if something were to change, we can deliver that in almost real time. For example, if the state of Idaho passes a law and says, you've got to do X, Y, and Z tomorrow, we'd have the ability to make that change in real time in the middle of the day.”
Chris Appie, President, Compliance Systems
“We're not looking at general customer interaction data. We're looking at spend information and we're able to get down to the SKU level and item level of their spend data, which is a differentiator from companies that provide financial analytics and analysis solutions for financial institutions. We don't look at where you shop; we look at what you buy.”
Corey Gross, CEO, Sensibill
“When the volume spikes, FIs need to handle the volume and still stay in compliance. So, what they do is raise their write-off limit and say, for example, anything below a hundred dollars, we're just going to write off automatically. But when you add that up over time, you're taking a substantial hit on the bottom line. If you look across FINBOA’s customer base, they've realized about a 26% reduction in those write-off losses. That gets the attention of FI executives.”
Dave Hunkele, Business Consultant, FINBOA
“The problem is a lot of business owners get caught up in those algorithms. It doesn’t matter if they had a client willing to pay them. All of their transactions were held for six weeks to clear because Square wanted to make sure that they protected Square. When those businesses needed money the most, they had six weeks of delays.”
Derik Sutton, VP of Marketing, Autobooks
“This is one of the first times where, unless you're trying to buy another bank, the regulators are actually not looking at FIs in this space. There are six bipartisan antitrust bills focused on six major companies, with more than 50 million monthly active users and more than $600 billion in revenue. That is where the focus is with regard to regulatory behavior.”
Farrell Hudzik, EVP, Cardlytics
“Most FIs open business accounts using technology built probably 10, 15 years ago. So, it takes probably an hour for a C corporation or an LLC to open an account in the branch. When it gets complex, it's taking five days. We make it faster and easier, but at the same time lower the cost for the FI.”
Heang Chan, CEO, Prelim
“When we’re just starting with a new institution, we convert past transactional data. But realistically, the AI engine has just started revving up. It needs about 90 days’ worth of transactions to really get going. Within 90 to 120 days, there's actionable data that a member can use.”
Jim Kern, Chief Sales Officer, Payrailz
“A big passion at Mambu is to make sure that we are creating a financial arena to serve the unbanked, the underbanked, and those who are on technologies that don't allow them to extend and have an amazing banking experience. What we're all about is giving not only us, but our kids and our kids' kids a better banking experience.”
Johanna Pugh, Managing Director of North America, Mambu
“Our job is to make it more expensive to attack our customers, than the return-on-investment criminals get back from doing so. We're going to raise the cost and effort to a certain point so that it’s no longer profitable to attack that institution. It's a very simple philosophy.”
Kevin Gosschalk, CEO, Arkose Labs
“I love the fact that we're bridging the gap for some smaller credit unions to play in the same space with some of these multi-billion-dollar credit unions that have a lot of resources. These smaller CUs have a loan origination system and a core system and they have to do all the other loan activities manually. We come in and say, oh, here you can click this button and we'll do it all for you.”
Martina Schubert, CTO, LenderClose
“I think the higher volume of opportunity is through partnership. It could be a reseller; it could be an integration partner. Acquisitions are always in the ballpark, but we find that you can really move the needle much quicker just through great partnerships and openness, as well, enabling our credit unions to be open and plug and play with their fintechs of choice.”
Nicole Harper, Senior Analyst, Strategy, Jack Henry & Associates
“Some issues can be fully resolved in self-service, but we all know what happens when that isn't true. You have to stop everything you were doing online, abandon your session and start over again on the phone. It just doesn't make sense to do business that way anymore when it's just as easy, in fact, easier to invite that same conversation to happen on the customer's own screen.”
Rick DeLisi, Lead Research Analyst, Glia